The Bitter Taste of Crimson
by Iyami-sama
Summary: The Nadesico-C re-launches following the events of the movie. And then things start going wrong.
1. introductions

_   
**Author's Notes**   
Okay, granted, I haven't written that much, but there's a definite pattern to what I have written. Write it, type it, proofread, revise, convert to html from plain text, then chapterize, then give it a final go through. This one I'm going to try smashing that process. Write it, type it, upload it, essentially. I'll try to stay a few chapters ahead, but not all that far ahead. Guess another departure for me will be decreasing the blood content. Language already gets a little rough, but there's not nearly as much violence in this one as the Inuyasha-Nadesico arc-thing. Yes, this one is completely seperate from that whole mess and totally unrelated. Aaaand expect more typos and spelling errors. I'm just going to use a text editor and a dictionary. So, we'll see what happens... _   
  
// \\  
  
Seated in the middle of a row of airline waiting chairs, a lone figure dozed, his feet propped on the baggage before him and his head leaning against the seat's back. The few travelers that walked past the man gave the impression that the man was a Goliath, a dark-skinned giant from Texas among the people of Japan at a full two meters in height.   
Without warning a duffle sailed through th air and thudded into the chair next to him. He slowly opened one eye to find the busness end of a rather large sword leveled at him. The eye closed itself again and its owner heaved a sigh, raising one arm to brush the sword away from him as he stood. "You know, Edinburgh, someday you should really learn how to use that thing."   
"And just where does the fabeled MIT student suggest I learn to use a Claymore? Sure I can find plenty of Kendo instructors around here, but Claymores? Come on."   
The darker man laughed slightly and shook his trenchcoat more comfortably around himself. "Beats me. I'm not the one swinging the sword around. You know you're supposed to get a license or something for those things around here, right?"   
"Unlike others in attendance, I do my homework. All that is squared away."   
"You mean to say they let a loon like you walk around Japan with a sword?"   
"Yea... hey!" The newcomer stuttered. Hused for a moment and smiled, digging the point of his weapon into the carpet before him. He shook his head, causing his massive locks to writhe around him. "Guess neither of us have really changed, have we? It's been what, two years, hasn't it Mike?"   
The trenchcoat shrugged. "Something like that." He paused to pitch his voice into a mockery of an announcer. "Masters Michael Christenson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Joseph Tobias McLaren of the University of Edinburgh will be discussing trends in academic computing versus those in corporate computing. Who dreamed that up?" he finished, returning his voice to normal.   
The latter laughed and wrapped his sword in its cloth. "Yeah, any place that refuses to call me JT scares me. Even moreso if they go for Joseph not Tobias."   
Christenson returned the smile. "So what are you doing here? You're about to be working for 'The Man to end all The Men.'"   
McLaren shrugged. "To get to work with Omoikane it's worth it."   
"And the chance to meet El Fairy Electronico isn't?"   
The Scotsman looked at his friend. "If I remember correctly, you were always the one chasing skirts, not me."   
"Yeah, but it was during your stay in Texas that summer for the conference where you first saw her image on the news. 'Smitten' was a good word to describe you."   
TJ smirked slightly and thickened his brogue. "Aye, maybe somewhat, but we could both feel empathy for her, couldn't we? She was 14, 15 and captaining a ship, and I was barely 16, you were 19, and we were up there leading a bloody panel discussion."   
"That'd put her at about 17 now, wouldn't it? Yes, just about the right age for you, Junior."   
"Shut up, Senior."   
"Me? Quiet? Anyways. You know that vessel captains in U.E. Spacey as well as the Confederation are just hottie figureheads."   
The Scotsman shrugged again noncommitently. "I'll admit I've tried to follow her 'career' a little bit, and I haven't heard enough to know if she's the figurehead type or not."   
"Guess we'll find out soon enough," Mike said as he cocked his head slightly. "Hmm. Propane tram comin'. Guess that's Mr. Uribatake coming to pick us up."   
The two watched as a tram careened down the hallway towards them, bouncing a few random travellers, suitcases, and now-unpotted plants off of its grill. The vehicle and its trailer screeched to a halt in front of them, and Christenson and McLaren were faced with their new immediate supervisor. "So! You two must be Omoikane's new lackeys!" Seiya said heartily.   
Mike's eyebrow raised slightly as JT began loading both of the baggage onto the tram's trailer. "You know," Christenson said slowly, "I didn't think you could slide one of these around like that."   
Seiya laughed loudly. "It takes some practice, I can tell you that."   
Mike flopped into the seat next to Seiya, pulling his coat's ends into the vehicle lest they were shredded en route to the ship. JT barely had time to leap onto the tram's bed before Uribatake rocketed the small truck down the hall again.   
  
// \\   
  
"But Kanchou! Aren't we enough to run Omoikane?"   
Prospector sighed slightly. The review he'd made Hoshino fill out on Makibi was correct. "Underestimates some areas of ability while overestimating others" was how she had phrased it. He was rephrasing it "alone, he sees himself as nothing but vulnerable, while with Hoshino-san he views the pair as invincible."   
"Oi, Hari-kun," Saburouta piped up, "isn't there a difference between running and maintaining?"   
"Demo..."   
"Hari-kun," Hoshino interrupted, "you are correct that we are enough to run Omoikane, but Saburouta-san is also correct that we need others to maintain him for us."   
"Maa, maa," Prospector said, quieting the parts of the trio before him in need of it. "Regardless, Akatsuki-san has made the decision and selected the crewmen already."   
Saburouta leaned sideways to look at the datasheets Prospector held. "Two, eh?"   
"Hai, one's 18, the other 21," Prospector replied, handing copies of the profiles to Ruri and Hari. "They will fall under Seiya's observation, so the two of you won't have to worry about shepherding them."   
"Uribatake-san is staying onboard?" Hari asked.   
"Hai," the bowtie responded. "A lot of the old crew have decided to return to their lives, but Uribatake-san opted to revive his comission for a while. Fressange-san will be joining us via shuttle."   
Ruri looked up from the profiles she was still reading through. "Has Yurika-san accepted the posistion as resident admiral?"   
"I may have to play cards with the UE Spacey as well as both Misumaru-san, but I think she will. I agree that she will fare better under Fressange-san's care than, shall we say, normal care?" Ruri nodded as she finished reading through the two engineers' profiles. Saburouta followed suit and commented, "How much money did you have to pay these two to recruit them away from their universities?"   
"Suprisingly little," Prospector replied. "Both were quite eager for the opportunity 'to work with Omoikane,' as one put it."   
Ruri and Hari both looked up upon hearing the pharse. "Demo... it's not common knowledge that Omoikane's sentient, is it?" Hari asked.   
"I suppose it is not inconceivable that others know of Omoikane more than his name, particularly those in a field such as theirs. It is also possible that the one that said it did not fully realize the accuracy of his words," Ruri replied.   
The group continued discussions of other new crew they were bringing onboard, though conversation tended to drift back to the two compsci students that were coming aboard. Even Ruri felt slight discomfort at letting strangers so close to Omoikane, though she understood the need for others to handle the more mundane tasks of Omoikane, freeing herself and Hari to focus on managing the ship as a whole. The debate continued until a soft chime at the conference room's door interrupted them. The entryway slid open to reveal Seiya flanked by two young men who both appeared to be rather shaken by their encounter with their supervisor's driving.   
  
// \\   
  
After the requisite formalities from Prospector regarding contracts and such, JT and Mike excused themselves from the room, reclaiming the baggage from outside the door where they had left it. Guided by a diagram of the ship through a maze of corridors, they finally found themselves outside of their facing quarters. They stood with their backs to each other, facing their doors.   
"You know these used to be storage compartments before they created our posistions?" Tobias asked.   
"Yeah," Mike said with a slight drawl. "At least we're right next to the central core, but..."   
"But. Storage compartments."   
"Exactly. On three?"   
"One."   
"Two."   
"Three," they chorused and punched their keycards against their locks. Each stepped into his room and groped for the lightswitch.   
Finding his first, Mike's eyes suddenly blinked against the flourescent lighting after growing accustomed to the darkness. "You sure these were storage compartments?"   
McLaren finally found the switch in his quarters and hit it before replying. "Yeah, that's what... Mr. Prospector... said...."   
"Damn storage compartment's bigger than my dorm room at MIT. Workstation, attached bath..."   
"Well, we don't seem to be near any other crew quarters, either."   
"Point," Michael said, tossing a backpack onto the bed. "So, should we introduce ourselves to Omoikane?" Upon not hearing a reply, he stepped back out into the hall to find his co-worker had donned his near-ever-present black leather jacket and was keying his access code into Omoikane's door.   
"For you to be older than me, it appears I'm way ahead of you." The doors which comprised the end of the hallway parted and the two stepped into the Lexan-walled office overlooked the main arrays which comprised Omoikane. Silently, the two walked past the mass of terminals that made up their workstations and through the glass door opposite the one they had just come through. Their office space was well insulated as both winced slightly at the chill of the core itself. For some time, neither said anything and simply stared down into Omoikane's six-deck cavern.   
"I once went on a trip to France," Mike said, his hushed voice almost inaudble over the roar of the systems around them. "While I was there, I visited the Louvre, as well as a couple of Cathedrals. That was nothing compared to this," he breathed.   
His companion said nothing but slowly nodded his head. The two stood quietly for a few minutes longer before returning to the warmer confines of their work area. "So, which station's which?" JT asked as the door finished closing, breaking the silence.   
"Well," Michael said, adopting a tone he might use with a child, "considering that the desks are arranged basicaly back to back, matching how our quarters face each other, that would be my first clue. My second clue would be the fact," he continued, shifting his tone back to normal," that you're the only moron I know who still likes old-fashioned keyboards around him!"   
"There's that, I suppose," the Scotsman replied as he settled into his workstation's rather large chair and pulled a keyboard towards himself.   
"I hate you, did you know that?"   
"I hate you too, buddy," came the reply as both swivled their pair of IFS interfaces up into place and began the ritual poking around in the systems.   
  
// \\   
  
A few hours later, chirping at the door indicated someone entering their access code for the room, and the two turned to see Makibi Hari standing in the doorway. "Ano... Kanchou wanted to know if you'd have dinner with us..."   
Christenson stretched in his chair. "Kanchou say 'you' as in 'JT' or 'you' as in 'y'all'?"   
"Nani?"   
"She means as in y'all, Tex," McLaren said, standing. "How else would she mean it?"   
Mike stood as well and the trio moved out into the hallway. "I suppose it does make sense. All she'd have to do is find a way to ditch Hari and me, and she'd have Supah-Pimp Toby all to herself."   
"I hate you, 'Mikey.'"   
"I hate you too, buddy."   
Hari looked up at the flowing-haired engineer as he led them through the ship. "Is he as bad as Saburouta-san?"   
JT glanced down and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. "Met Saburouta-san when I met you. Couldn't say."   
"_I_ can say," Mike said, jabbing a thumb towards himself. "I'm the Original Ecchi! Pheer mah womainizing!"   
"M-mike-san!" Hari blurted.   
"Don't let 'im get to you kid. Unless your bra size is bigger than his ego, he's harmless."   
The banter continued as the trio trekked onward towards the ship's cafeteria where their Captain waited.   
  
// \\   
  
"Patient" was certainly a word synonymous with the golden-eyed captain of the _Nadesico_. Alternately, that had no bearing on whether or not she got bored. As such, she found herself wishing that she'd brought with her the novel she was currently reading or at least some paperwork to work on while she waited for Hari to arrive with Christenson and McLaren. However, she hadn't and had only her thoughts to occupy her while she waited. She let her mind drift back to meeting the two new engineers brought onboard for Omoikane's sake. Omoikane had no direct influence over the decision; it had been Akatsuki's final decision as Prospector had said. At the same time she held the opinion that the computer's self-awareness had asserted itself in the process and had quietly encouraged the hiring of these two particular candidates.   
One of them, Christenson, had immediately hit it off with Saburouta during the introductions. She supposed ti was something of the womanizer in each of them that caused them to get along. She imagined on the walk here he would manage to embarrass Makibi at least once.   
The other one, "JT", she hadn't decided what to make of yet. He hadn't said very much when they met, yet... The best she could express it was that his smile reminded her of Akito's. She know that didn't completely define the impression she had of him, but it was the best way she could express it at the moment. She wasn't too concerned, since there woul dbe plenty of time to sort out how she defined him, as well as the rest of the new crew, after the _C_ re-launched in a few weeks, in addition to the fact that the party in question was stepping through the cafeteria's door with Hari and Christenson at the moment.   
  
// \\ _   
**Footnotes...**   
Well, not much to comment on, although there are a few points...   
First, McLaren's sword. Nope, no real significance, other than that it's attributed with which you'll read about in a few chapters. I figured I'd toss it in to kind of Mary Sue the character for a little bit. I don't intend for it to be a major plot-point or anything, just a conversation piece to waste words on. Cuz I'm long-winded.   
Second, "El Fairy Electronico" is certainly _not_ Spanish. It's just something that occasionally happens in Texas... I guess you could call it "faux Spanish."   
Third, the storage compartments really are a joke, at least to me. It's kind of a "Trouble with Tribbles" kinda thing. Ya either know what I mean or there's no point explaining. I've just always been amused by Kirk's line about storage compartments.   
Finally, "Supah Pimp" and "pheer" (which could more accurately be spelled ph34r). Yeah, I tried to put a little bit of Mac Hall and Largo into Mike. It's just a little obvious right there ;-)   
I don't see a need to spell out what Japanese I use, I should warn you. My knowledge of the language is definitely subpar, just stuff I've picked up from watching subs, which anybody should pick up on. And if you've only watched Nadesico dubbed,_ GOD, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?????   
_ No, I don't feel strongly about the quality of the Nadesico dub, nope, not at all... damn, would you look at how big my nose just got?   
Ja. _


	2. Port Sniffs &RR Mode,no citreous,promise

  
  
The next morning, Mike half-dragged himself the few feet to his chair in the core, muttering a gutteral greeting to his companion who was already at his station. The later replied to the utterance with a cheerful "Good morning" which did nothing but grate on the nerves of the former. "Damn, you're cheerful. What, did you get some last night?"   
McLaren paused in his keying and turned his chair to face the back of Christenson's. "Answer the first, if I did it'd be none of yer bloody buisness. Answer the second, no."   
Christenson swivled his chair to look out over Omoikane. "You know, I've no reason to believe you. Hari headed back to his quarters pretty soon after dinner, and after Seiya joined us it was a couple of hours before he dragged me off to check out the new Aesti's that had arrived yesterday morning. But after that, nobody but you and the Kanchou know what you did.   
"Well, Saburouta-san could colaborate at least some of it," the Scotsman defended. "He dropped by shortly after you left. Jury's still out on whether or not you're a bigger ecchi than he is."   
"Oh, I'll sway the jury, if I have to download half the pr0n on the net to do it!"   
"You do that. Anyways. We talked for a while after Saburouta-san left, then I walked the Kanchou back to her quarters. End of evening."   
"That's it?"   
"That's it."   
"Damn. Hey, we gonna do Friday Frag?"   
"Like we did the summer of that conference?" Tobias responded. "Don't see why not. There'll certainly be enough crew around here to pull it off."   
"Aaaw yeah, fresh meat for the killin'."   
"Is it being from Texas or being from MIT that makes you that way?" Tobias asked as he stood.   
"Where're you going?"   
The younger stretched out his arms, showing off the fact he was wearing a turtleneck and jeans under the black leather jacket. "To put on a uniform before heading up to the bridge. Seiya said the Kanchou wants the IFS in her chair fine-tuned," he said, heading off the question.   
  
// \\   
  
A few mintues later the doors to the bridge parted and the engineer stepped onto the deck. Hari looked up from his station and smiled slightly at the visitor, but his face took on a puzzled look when he noticed what the elder was carrying. "Ano... why do you have a harness with you?"   
"I figured it was this or turn off gravity on the bridge," Tobias replied, shrugging into the climbing gear. The confused look didn't leave Hari's face so Tobias continued the explanation as he nodded his greeting to the captain. "Apparnetly, the ship wasn't designed by Scotsmen. From the notes I found in the engineering logs, to adjust the IFS, Kanchou has to put her station into 'R.R.' mode, whatever that is, so I can swing under her chair to make the adjustments," he concluded, settling himself on the edge of Ruri's pit and swinging his legs down. The captain turned in her chair and looked about to say something but held her tounge as a slight blush crept up on her cheeks. "Did I say something wrong, Kanchou?"   
Ruri shook her head. "Dame. It's just that the 'R.R.' they noted means 'Ruri-Ruri mode.'"   
"Ah, I see," the engineer responded as he attached the safety lines to his harness. He waited as the front of Ruri's station seperated and her chair started moving forward. McLaren cautiously stepped onto the moving beam and secured his lines to it. Once everything stopped moving he swung underneath the captain's chair and hung suspended above the deck below. As he opened the access panel he saw the window sphere materialize to life around the Kanchou. As he began making the adjustments he saw his own IFS implants glowing subtly in response to the strength of Ruri's.   
Tobias was most of the way trough the optimization phase when Uribatake's visage appeared beside him. "TJ-kun! Did you ask her?"   
"Who her sir?" McLaren countered.   
"Kanchou, her, of course! Mike-kun told me aobut your Friday Frag and as your supervisor I order you to invite her! It's too perfect!"   
Had blood not already been flooding into his face from being suspended upside down, it certainly would have done so now. "Um, Uribatake-san, I'm kind of in the middle of something right... wait a second, just what do you mean by 'too perfect?'"   
"A perfect opportunity for the two of you to develop a relationship! She likes games, you like games! As a man, I must help those under my care!"   
"Uribatake-san, ah, now's not a very good time..."   
"It's a perfect time! You must seize the day! Carpe Diem!"   
Tobias wasn't sure if it was salvation or damnation coming when his captain's visasge appeared beside him as well. "TJ-san, how are the adjustments coming?"   
"Very well, Kanchou! Just a few more minutes then I think-"   
"That's where you are?!" Uribatake shrieked as if cornered.   
"Ah, yes, sir."   
"So Ruri-Ruri heard-"   
"Our entire conversation, sir."   
"Ah... um... Hey! You! Be careful with that Aestivalis!" Uribatake yelled off-screen as his image disappeared from existence.   
Tobias turned to the screen holding the captain's visage, his face fully red now in multiple ways, but was in time to catch her small smile. "Didn't it appear that Uribatake-san was in the cafeteria?"   
"Actually, it did, now that you mention it," he replied, making the last adjustment and slamming the panel closed. "That's all folks."   
"Arigato" Ruri replied as she began returning her station to its normal mode. "So, Friday Frag?"   
"Hai. Mike & I based it off of the old concept of a LAN Party," Tobias explained as Ruri's station finished closing around her. He propped on the edge of her pit once again as he continued. "In the 'old days,' to get a lot of people in a game you almost had to have everyone in the same room so that there was enough bandwidth to play. Now the reason for everyone being in the same room is simply social."   
Hari left his station to join the two at Ruri's pit. "Which games?"   
"No clue. Something involving Capture the Flag, at least."   
"Kanchou, what do you think?" Hari asked.   
Ruri nodded her head in agreement. "Hari-kun, speak to Saburouta-san as well."   
"Hai. McLaren-san, what needs to be done?"   
"Eh, not much. Mike & I will probably draft yourself and Saburouta-san to help set up Friday evening, but that's about it."   
"Ch-chotomate..." Hari stammered. "Set up in the evening? How late will this thing go?"   
McLaren shrugged as he rose to leave. "Normally about 2 in the morning. Once it lasted 'til 5:30-"   
"5:30 Saturday morning?" Hari gasped in shock.   
"Actually, it was 5:30 Monday morning," Tobias replied as he neared the door.   
"T-tobias-san!" Hari called to the closing door.   
  
// \\   
  
Tobias slumped into his workstation's chair and loosened his uniform's collar. "Dude, you're going to have to work on your timing when it comes to telling Seiya things."   
"Oh?" Mike returned absently, barely looking up from his screens. Tobias proceeded to give his senior the details of the embarrassment he suffered under the Captain's chair.   
"Just goes to show, always be the one to make the first move with a lady," Mike said, flicking through screens.   
Tobias turned and stared icily at the back of Mike's chair. "By Friday, Lieutenant Makibi will be the only person on this ship that hasn't tried to get us together."   
"Maa-maa," Mike replied, impersonating the Prospector. "We'll have him on the conspiracy by Thursday at the latest."   
"May God have mercy on your immortal soul."   
"Amen. Check this out." Mike keyed a display for both of them to see.   
McLaren scanned the information presented him. "Access logs for Omoikane's external ports. So?"   
"So I didn't have anythign better to do, so I started drilling through the data," Mike said, grabbing his IFS and resorting the data. Tobias followed the sort easy enough, one by accessing address.   
"So? Doesn't suprise me that Nergals ranges would be regularly scanned. Hell, I knew their ranges in elementary school. It's public record. Just means some schoolkid's pushing his luck with trying to get into Omoikane."   
"Maybe," Christenson replied. "But are the secure ports a part of that public record?"   
"The ones for maintenance and emergency control? The defaults tend to be known, but you set those to rotate off of an algorithm, right?"   
"And those algo's are better guarded than the CEO's Porche," Mike replied. "Now, let me show you this data filtered for Omoikane's secure ports algo." he paused momentarily as Omoikane applied the filter then flashed the results. "Here you go. The record of the number of port sniffs of Omoikane's secure ports."   
"Oh, Miiiiikey.." JT chanted, "don't use 'of' three times in a sentence. Second, your filter's backwards. You only removed five entries."   
Michael smiled. "Alright, you build the data filter this time."   
Tobias grabbed a keyboard and quickly hammered the keys. "There. Omoikane's algorithm overlayed with- What the f-"   
"Yeeeeeees, Neo. Welcome, to the Valley, of the Real."   
"Next steps?"   
"Probably a honeypot. That'll need Seiya's permission and Kanchou's blessing. There's been no maintenance window so those ports have stayed closed..."   
"But next week a lot of systems are due to receive firmware updates. If they caught one of those ports while it was open..."   
"they could add any virus they wanted to it. And since they have the algorithm..."   
"...then whatever they've got written may not be designed to execute for weeks or even months."   
"And they probably could fake the signatures to appear normal to Omoikane's viral software."   
"Meaning we'd only find out after it brought us down or if we accidently tripped on it."   
"Exactly," Mike said gravely. "Some Monday, huh?"   
"Shit."   
  
// \\ _   
**author's notes...**   
Well, we now have the beginnings of a plot formed. I aplogize for all the technobabble about ports. I figure there are two camps - those that don't give a flying flip about how Omoikane works and those who would crucify me for what I'm going to be doing soon to Omoikane & the ship if I didn't provide some kind of explanation as to how what's happening's happening.   
For those who read through the technobabble but aren't nerd-types like me, yeah, all this stuff is pretty much how I understand things to work now, just projected forward a bit (such as the "little" patch coming up here in a bit).   
And, yeah, "May God have mercy on your immortal soul" is quoting Hellsing & the Valley of the Real stuff is indeed Matrix.   
Ja. _


	3. Semisentimental blathering

  
  
As with any ship preparing for launch, the rest of the week blurred past for the crew of the _Nadesico_. By Friday a good majority of the crew had arrived, enough so that the venue for the Friday Frag was moved to the ship's gym, one of the largest single rooms on the ship.   
As the day wore on, Hari, Saburouta and a good third of the engineering staff found themselves in Christenson's care setting up for the evening's carnage. Despite looking forward to it, Christenson's partner in crime for the event preferred to linger with Omoikane. Earlier in the day McLaren had completed all the setup Omoikane had needed and was now scanning log files to a soundtrack consisting for the most part of music made before he was born. Somehow he managed to lose track of time in the process, as engineers are wont to do. Ruri, on the other hand, spent the day in the midst of the politics of launching the _Nadesico_, and was acutely aware of the time.   
She had received a call halfway through the afternoon from Yurika, who was opting to stay on Earth for now. It was news which she expected but still really didn't want to hear and served to increase the tedium of the afternoon. Prospector was fully aware of the decision, and was equally aware of the impact it had the young captain. By four in the afternoon he gave up and all but shooed the Kanchou off-duty.   
Ruri wandered the quiet halls of the ship, knowing there would still be time before the shift ended and even more time before the evening's "LAN party" started. She found that her wandering had brought her near the main computer core, and, guessing that "Omoikane's Minions" were elsewhere on the ship, decided to editate in the presence of her old friend. She rounded the final corner and began to walk the final meters to his door when Omoikane flashed a warning sign before her.   
"Nan desu ka, Omoikane?"   
A new sign appeared: "Nothing's wrong, Kanchou, but you may wish to enter quietly."   
"Nani, Omoikane?" returned Ruri, to which Omoikane replied with a screen Ruri understood the meaning of well enough but had never seen him show before: "^_^".   
One of Ruri's eyebrows cocked as Omoikane moved to allow her entry. She reaced for the keypad but found Omoikane was opening the doors for her. She glanced at the empty workstations to the right and left of the door and didn't immediately understand the reason for Omoikane's warning. As she stepped into the office area, she noticed through the plexiglass McLaren leaning against the rail over the core, and realized that she might not be the only one using Omoikane as a meditation chamber.   
While the realization was certainly valid, at the current moment it was inaccurate as she soon realized. She had walked in between stanzas. The thick lexan muffled the sound but there was no mistaking what he was doing in the core. She walked over to the door to Omoikane himself and as quietly as necessary entered the core. As she closed the door she leaned back against it and opted to wait until he had finished to announce her presence.   
Either the song was short or she had walked in on the end of it, as it wasn't long before he had apparently finished. Not knowing of a better way to announce herself, Ruri simply asked, "Latin, ka?"   
Tobias spun, revealing a flourescent red face not caused by the core's air conditioning. "K...Kanchou... um. Close. Italian, actually. Um, I might should go help Mike and make sure he doesn't accidently kill Lieutenant Makibi."   
"Hari-kun will be fine," Ruri objected.   
Tobias smiled. "Point. Besides, if Mike kills him, I get to kill Mike."   
Ruri stepped forward and looked down into Omoikane. "The two of you are very competitive, aren't you?"   
The Scotsman shrugged in what was quickly becoming a trademark manner. "I honestly don't care. I don't consider myself naturally competitive; I leave that up to other family members. I guess we are competitive, but he has yet to lock me in a trunk for a job interview."   
The stood quietly for a while, both unsure if conversation was necessary. As Ruri looked out across the core she heard the familiar sound of a message window opening despite the mild roar around her. She glanced towards the engineer and saw the window close as quickly as it opened. He didn't see her look towards him as he was still staring dumbfoundedly at the location the screen had resided a moment ago. "Nan desu ka?" she queried.   
Tobias shook himself from his reverie and shook his head as well. "Ah, it's nothing, Kanchou," he replied, attempting to assure himself as much as his commanding officer. "Um, there's still a while before the fun's supposed to start," he started, staring at the toes of his boots. "Would you care to join me for the British version of tea?"   
He looked up, clearly unsure if he wanted her to respond affirmative or negative. Ruri was about to make her response the latter when she noticed Omoikane open a message just over McLaren's shoulder. Tobias noticed her gaze shift and started follow it when she suddenly answered with a quick "Hai."   
Ruri followed Tobias the short distance to his quarters, almost afraid of what lay beyond his door after her first excursion into an engineer's lair several years before on the first _Nadesico_. She breathed a small sigh of relief when the door opened to reveal quarters kept as spartan as her own. Out of habit she left her shoes by the door and was relieved to see Tobias follow her lead. His empty workstation raised her curiosity enough to ask about it.   
"Oh, it's not that i don't use it," Tobias quickly responded, toeing a bag near the entryway. "It's just that it's all in there," he continued. "Keyboards, spare IFS controllers, high memory projectors, the usual gaming paraphenalia. Make yourself at home," he finished as he bagan rummaging for tea's hardware.   
Ruri sat down in one of the two sidechairs in the room the surveyed Tobias' domain. A rolled up futon in one corner and a stereo sitting on the dresser, above which hung a rather large sword, were the main changes to the room it appeared he had effected. "McLaren-san, is the sword purely ornamental?"   
"The Claymore? More or less. It was carried by one of my clansmen in Wallace's uprising in 1297, but I've no idea how to use it. Hey, I know it's traditional both in England & Japan to serve sweets with tea, but do you want anything more substantial? Prospector's having pizza brought in but I've never had any from there – some place he knows called 'Peaceful Days.'"   
Ruri smiled, "Eating light will be fine, I know Peaceful Days' chef."   
Tobias nodded and brought the paraphenalia over to where Ruri was sitting. After setting the tray on the small table between the chairs he crossed over to the dresser and rifled through the music disks piled there. "Any preferences?" he asked, loading several into the stereo unit. "Black Album it is," he responded after Ruri shook her head.   
Ruri's eyes widened in suprise at the cacophony which emitted from the speakers as her host grabbed the unit's remote and moved to sit in the remaining chair. The look wasn't lost on McLaren, who stumbled out an explanation. "Ah, there's something we should probably discuss, Kanchou. That's the reason for the thrash. I've found that it interferes with Omoikane's ability to interpret speech, which I thought was a problem at the time."   
"Then I take it you did not invite me here entirely of your own choice, the same being true of my acceptance. Would I surmise correct that Seiya is part of the conspiracy as well?"   
Tobias nodded, "As is Mike of course, and he'd pledged to have Hari in on it by yesterday as well." He switched the music to a more benevolent selection as he finished.   
Ruri reclined in the chair and accepted the cup he offered her. "How are the preparations going for Monday's honeypot?"   
"Mike has all of the software in place, and hardware will be ready as soon as I get the case back from the Aesti guys." JT read the furrowed brow and responded. "It seems there was a debate among them as to whether it would be, as they put it, 'Subaru Red' or 'Tenkawa Pink.'"   
"Making the case unique so that it would not be confused with other units? What is the liklihood of that system becoming totally unusable?"   
"Unknown," came the reply. "Every simulation Mike, Omoikane or I could think of to run came up with drastically different results on each iteration."   
"I see," Ruri replied, and debated for a moment the next question on her mind. "Tobi-san, the song I heard you sing earlier. What is it called?"   
"'Alma del Core,'" Tobias replied, blushing slightly. Ruri's expression indicated that the answer wouldn't suffice, and the blush deepened as he continued. "I took some voice lessons to fill up credits one semester, that was one of the ones I had to learn or at least an abreviated version of it. There's a longer one, but the lyrics to this one are only 'Alma del core, spirto dell alma, sempre costante t'adorero. Saro contento nel mio tormento, se quel bel labbro baciar potrò.' The first part apparently translates two ways, 'fairest adored, spirit of beauty,' and more accurately 'soul of my heart, spirit of my soul.' The rest is 'Always constantly will I adore you. I will be contented in my torment, if only I.. uh... could kiss those beautiful lips," he finished, almost muttering the last part in his embarassment. "I guess I shouldn't have told Omoikane what I know, huh?"   
"It's hard to hide anything from Omoikane," Ruri replied, smiling slightly both at the man next to her and her own memories. "So, should we head towards the festivities?"   
  
// \\ 


	4. b4wlz! w1t gu4r4n4!

  
  
"Alright, alright alright alright," Mike chanted aloud. "Pizza!"   
"Check!" Hari called.   
"Caffeine and b33r!"   
"Check!" Saburouta replied.   
"Stations are check," Mike said, answering for himself. "Now, where are our esteemed captain and my cellmate?"   
Omoikane popped a window into existence. "They are still in McLaren-san's quarters."   
"Oh ho!" Saburouta cheered, throwing Christenson into a headlock. "Does this mean our work is already done?"   
"Tobi-kun and the Kanchou are too much alike," Mike said, breaking and returning the headlock. "They're probably talking about work."   
Omoikane flashed another screen. "Essentially correct. However, there were 1:37.2 seconds of conversation I was unable to track due to acoustic interference."   
"In other words, they're on to us," Mike concluded, releasing his hold on Saburouta.   
"Demo, how do you know?" Hari interjected.   
"TJ figured out that Omoikane can't register voice commands with old Metallica albums playing. It seems like all other music doesn't bother him, just the early stuff of that particular band."   
Saburouta sighed. "Guess Kanchou likes to take things slow, mmmmm Hari?"   
"Kanchou and I are alike in that we prefer to build friendships and the like at our own speeds, which also appear to not be fast enough for some people in the room."   
Saburouta and Mike spun to see the targets of their plans standing before them. None of the conspirators present were quite sure how much of the conversation had been overheard. It was Hari, however, who broke the silence. "Ano, didn't Omoikane just say that you were both still in McLaren-san's room?"   
Omoikane popped   
a screen into existence. "They were. I asked them to stay there until I was asked about it."   
Saburouta folded his arms. "That's a rather long distance for a comptuer to go so that it doesn't actually lie."   
Omoikane responded with "^_^" which caused Mike's eyebrow to lift a notch. "Tober, have you been teaching Omoikane to speak l33t?"   
"Actually," JT replied, claming a station and plopping his gear into its chair, "He picked it up from your chat logs."   
"Ah, did he pick anything, er else up from my chat logs?"   
"It does not appear so," Ruri replied innocently. "Is there something we should be aware of?" she asked as she selected the seat next to Tobias.   
"Er, I should go set up my own station now, shouldn't I?" Mike quickly replied as he hurriedly made his way to the other side of the room.   
Hari watched with a look of concern on his face, as the space Christenson was retreating to was cordoned to be one of the opposing sides. "Ano... aren't you going to be on the same team as us?" Mike and Tobias looked at each other and quickly shook their heads as Mike replied, "It's stacking the deck as it is letting the three of you be on the same team."   
"Demo... I've never doen this before..."   
McLaren tossed an extra IFS unit to Hari. "We tried to weight everying into two sets of two teams: Blue and Green, Red and Yellow."   
Saburouta grabbed a char in the still empty blue quadrant of the room. "hai, hai. Mike's green team, my blue, Kanchou's yellow, and Ryoko's red teams."   
Ruri glanced over to JT as she sat down. "Has Ryoko-san arrived yet?"   
Mclaren shrugged. "Omoikane didn't show her as arriving yet, but Saburouta threatened me within an inch of my life if I didn't give her command of a quadrant."   
"This certainly seems like something she'd enjoy," Hari commented. "Demo, aren't we missing a few seats for our side, Tobias-san?"   
ruri quickly countd chairs and found herself in agreement. There were at least half a dozen less chairs in their area than in the other corners.   
"Just leveling the sports field, professor."   
"A bit arrogant now, aren't we?" Ruri chided.   
"Perhaps, but at least not in my own abilities," Tobias replied, glancing sideways to enjoy the arched eyebrows emanating from the seats beside him. "What? You didn't think Omoikane would be content just keeping score, did you?"   
Ruri's eyes widened in mild suprise momentarily but returned to normal as she considred the situation. "I suppose it makes sense, as technologically Omoikane could be viewed as merely an evolution of the AI in games."   
"Demo..." Hari interjected, "wouldn't Omoikane have an unfair advantage over us?   
Tobias shook his head. "Mike figured out how to segment him so that the part he was using to control his character couldn't see the maps until we do, as well as how to basically underclock a portion of him to give him more human reaction times. The handicap won't make him any less of a formidable opponent, but it does put things a little better in check." Tobias looked over the area he'd claimed then stood and walked over to the food table.   
"Ne, Kanchou," Hari started as soon as tobias was out of earshot. "What do you think of him?"   
"Hari-kun, tobias-san and I know you're part of Mike-san's 'consipracy.' Perhaps you should tell me your own impression of him. I admit I'm surprised you're a willing participant," Ruri replied frankly.   
Hari blushed and stuttered, trying to form a reply. Ruri toyed wth the console in front of her. She knew it was probably a bit cruel of her, considering she was well aware of how he felt about her, and it appeared that he was thnking more about that than he was her question.   
Hari breathed a sigh of relief when McLaren returned before he could form his reply. Ruri silently cursed at how quickly he'd come back. While she had no intention of answering Hari's question, she was genuinely interested in his answer to hers. She glanced up and smiled slightly to Tobias as he stopped in front of the claimed stations, noticing he had conscripted one of the technicians to help him carry plates and drinks. Her classic look of suprise soon replaced the smile when she realized just how much food he had piled on their plates. "Tobias-san... isn't this a bit much?"   
"Eh, it'll be a long night. Save getting up a few times," Tobias responded, handing Hari his plate and a cobalt-colored bottle. He took his own plate form the patient tech beside him and set it at his area before he took another bottle and opened it to hand to his captain.   
Hari stared at the beverage he'd been handed after he opened it. "Ano... this isn't... beer, is it?"   
Seiya appearead seemingly out of nowhere to stand in front of Hari. "EEHHHHHHH!!!!!! This is no beer! Since Fressange-san isn't here I'll have to explain on her behalf! This!" he cried, thrusting forth his own mostly-empty bottle to hold before Hari. "This is alcohol-free! This is guarana! This is an engineer's drink! Better than coffee! Better than Jolt!"   
"Ano, Jolt?" Hari asked.   
Seiya continued without pausing to realize Hari had asked a question. "This is better than twice-brewed coffee made from Jolt!"   
"Ew," Tobias muttered to Ruri, who nodded in response.   
"Ruri-chan! Hari-kun! I give you.... BAWLS!!" Seiya triumphantly finished, replete with the fist holding the bottle thrust into the air.   
Mike walked over form his corner of the room and stood beside the chief engineer with arms folded. "Mr. Uribatake, how much Bawls have you had?"   
Seiya scratched his head for a moment before replying. "Four, I think. Maybe five. No, wait. Six."   
"In other words, enough," Mike finished and suddenly mock-curtsied. "Excuse us, Kanchou et al, but Seiya and myself were just leaving for other parts of the room. Come, Bossman!"   
"So, Kanchou," JT said thoughtfully as the trio watched Mike half-drag the energetic Seiya away, "was the ship more or less of a madhouse before they hired us?"   
Ruri cocked her head slightly as she looked over at him, "About the same, actually."   
"Damn," the engineer replied with a smile. "Gonna have to kick it up a notch, I guess. Omoikane!"   
"Is it time?" a familiar screen asked.   
"Bang a gong, the gib is on," McLaren replied.   
  
// \\   
  
Ruri stretched and glanced at the time as Omoikane switched maps. Ryoko had made her somewhat grandiose entrance around six when the gibbing officially began. The group had managed to stick with Capture the Flag for a considerableamoung of time, almost three hours, until Ryoko had gotten tired of Saburouta getting the drop on her. Everything then promptly turned into a free-for-all deathmatch which Omoikane was more than willing to accommodate. Ruri glanced up to see a few crew members slip out quietly and then just as quietly keyed up the rankings so far.   
"You and Omoikane are rather formidable," Tobias' voice teased form beside her.   
Ruri glanced at him before studying the screen some more. "Omoikane's standing isn't suprising, but I am surprised to see myself leading Ryoko-san."   
Tobias laughed slightly, "Quake, where all else is equal."   
Ruri stifled a yawn before she continued. "Hari-kun is certainly enjoying himself," she said as she watched the boy talk excitedly with Saburouta about the last few rounds.   
"indeed," Tobias agreed, surveying the room. He saw Mike immersing himself in something but couldn't tell what. He had noted from Ruri's screen that his friend's ranking was about where it should be, so it didn't worry him too much. He was probably trying to crack into things he already had access to, which he had a habit of doing.   
"Tobias-san, I believe I'm done for the night."   
Tobias stood as well when she rose. "Um, care for some company on the walk back to your quarters?"   
"Aren't my quarters out of your way?" Ruri asked.   
Tobias shrugged and pulled his jacket off of the back of his chair. "Technically, sure, but I need to walk some of the caffeine and guarana out of my system. Unless you'd prefer solitude, which I'd completely understand after the past four hours."   
"Hai," Ruri heard herself say with a little bit of shock. As they walked out of the carnival Ruri reflected that the shocked part of her came from the same part which wanted to mope because Yurika wasn't coming aboard, and the part that said "sure" was the part Yurika had taught to occasionally need other people.   
"Um, you have no reason to asnwer this if you don't want to..." McLaren started after the din behind them disappeared.   
"mm?" she responded agreeably as she began phrasing answers for any one of a multitude of cliché and predictable question she'd heard people ask in similar situations.   
"Kanchou, I know it's not my place to ask, but is everything okay? Something appears to be bothering you."   
Ruri smiled slightly and let out a small sigh of relief. She caught Tobias' puzzled look from the corner of her eye. "I was just expecting a more... predictable question."   
McLaren grinned. "After all of the conspiracy, you mean? Something like..." he leaped in front of the captain and fell to one knee, adopting a cavalier pose and tone, "My dearest Captain, though I have known thee but one short week, I hath decided that it is thee I must wed if but thou wouldst have me! Nay! Answer me not now! Meditate upon thus and return thine answer on the morrow my fair lady!"   
"Me thinks thou doth protest too loudly, my Lord," Hoshino returned.   
"Touche, Kanchou," Tobias said as he rose and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, returning as well to his usual light brogue.   
He fell into step beside Ruri as she opted to continue down the hall before speaking. "I suppose after your theatrics I owe you an honest ans- Chotomate," she cut off, stopping short in the hallway. "You weren't serious back there, were you?"   
Tobias shook his head. "Of course not, Kanchou. That'd be a rather stupid question to be serious about after knowing someone barely a week. As to your previous statement, your reputation precedes you, Kanchou. I expected either the answer or no answer at all. I doubt you're capable of dishonesty. Unless you're reputation's dead wrong."   
Ruri felt her cheeks slightly redden but pressed on in her reply. "How much do you know about this ship's and her predecessors' histories?"   
"Everything the public knows, of course. There are some miscellaneous pieces that, let's say, I've 'acquired' from Nergal's archives, plus what Omoikane's told me, which I guess is a lot." he laughed self-deprecatingly. "I guess the only ones more familiar with _Nadesico_ history are the ones who've made it."   
"So you know who Yurika-san is?"   
McLaren nodded, "At least the name I know. First captain of the ship. Married Tenkawa Akito. Adopted Hoshino Ruri. Believed dead along with Tenkawa Akito in a shuttle accident. Rescued by Hoshino Ruri and the _Nadesico C_ from the Successors."   
Ruri returned the nod. "We had asked her to be the ship's resident command officer, but I found out early this afternoon she is choosing to remain on earth for the time being. I suppose I'm disappointed at the decision."   
"I see. That's certainly to be expected." They lapsed quietly into their own thoughts as they continued to walk. Some minutes later they found themselves in front of the Captain's quarters. Ruri paused momentarily and then swiped her access card through its slot, opening her door. She thought for a moment more then turned to Tobias and bowed. "Thank you for inviting hari-kun and I this evening. I enjoyed it."   
Tobias somewhat awkwardly returned her gesture. "Thank you for coming, Kanchou. You certainly gave everyone a run for their money." As both righted themselves, each found the other to be blushing slightly. "um, since we'll be launching I doubt we'll have Peaceful Days' pizza again, but I'm sure we'll have the same event next week. Yourself and Hari will certainly be welcome." Ruri noded in agreement and stepped inside her quarters.   
"Oh, and Kanchou," McLaren said before the door closed. "Um, I have plenty of tea. You're, ah, welcome to have some anytime."   
"Arigato," Ruri replied with a smile as she closed the door.   
  
// \\ 


	5. Tests and PostMortems

  
_Author's Notes_   
This chapter may be a bit boring, but it's an attempt to build some background for the plot. It's a combo of how I understand honeypots to work and how patches really do work, at least in the corporate culture I'm in. Hopefully a little bit of amusement to the techies out there. The movie, to me, felt like they tried to rip the hacking bits straight out of today's concept of what hackers are (concept of what they are, not what they are, if that makes any sense). If there are any thoughts to the contrary, feel free to share 'em - my addy's posted in my bio here. "Futurism" amuses me - I can make all the guesses I want as to how my field will work in the future (yes, Mike & Tobias are marysues in that they're a combination of everybody I work with, run through a blender, and whacked onto silly putty to be stretched), but it's still gonna be way off base. Read Heinlen's "For Us, the Living" and you'll grok what I mean. Anyways, I'm rambling, on with the story.   
  
// \\   
Monday quickly dawned on the moored _Nadesico_. Even Mike was on duty early for the frenzy of activity that would precede the honeypot. By noon everything was in place, with Omoikane comletely isolated from the rest of the ship and all of his normal inputs routed to the dummy box, which, it had finally been decided, was painted Ryoko Red. Seiya and Mike hovered around the disconnects, watching in paranoia.   
Tobias sat on the bridge, having commandered Saburouta's station for the day. Not that Saburouta was absent. He was, in fact, leaning over the back of his chair watching with interest everything Tobias did. "Oi, Tober," Saburouta finally asked. "Are you actually reading everything on those screens?"   
Tobias glanced over his shoulder at the Jovian. "Huh? You mean these?" he asked, pointing at the half-dozen screens of scrolling text in front of him.   
Saburouta nodded. "Kanchou and Hari do the same thing, a complete window sphere."   
"Truth is, I'm reading none of it."   
"Nani?" Hari chimed in, his visage materializing beside the pair. "What do you mean you don't read any of your screens?"   
Ruri only partly paid attention to the banter behind her, just enough to referee if she had to. Another part of her was randomly trying to get to the outside world without going through the bait, looking for any door they might not have shut and so far finding none. The rest of her mind was wandering. It seemed that everyone close to herself and McLaren were trying to get them to unite into a couple. Omoikane had even gotten in on it. Omoikane, at least, appeared to have innocent intentions. He had merely seen that McLaren contained personality traits close to her own, and thus intended only to force them into interaction. His objective had been to make them aware of each other on a personal level and not just a professional, and in this Omoikane had succeeded. How close she would grow to him and vice versa still remained to be seen, just so long as her personal life on this ship wasn't the... Ruri paused in her train of thought, unsure of how one could verbalize how every female on a ship chased after Tenkawa Akito and the chaos that went with it. Still, she wasn't sure that she had any desire to pursue with Tobias what Yurika had successfully pursued with Akito. She had sensed that Tobias was open to such a relationship with her, but like her had no desire to rush the matter, either.   
She leaned her head back against her chair's headrest, aware of the still-ongoing screen debate and stared at the main viewer's image of still harbor beyond the ship's hull. There were other aspects fo the problem which she really didn't care to delve into at the moment, which Ruri dumped into the rough category of "dating practices." Ruri was well aware from her studies with Omoikane that at some point she would have to realize and define her concept of dating and those kinds of relationships. What she had seen on the first _Nadesico_ told her that she would be forced to do so but had not yet seen the need to do such until, apparently, now. Even if there was no romantic involvement with Tobias, it would at some point have to be done, and she knew not even Omoikane could decide for her on it.   
Ruri's mind strayed further from her screens as her train of thought led her to remember the first time Yurika and Akito... Ruri forced her mind to halt as a blush claimed her cheeks. With the three living under the same roof, she knew what would happen at some point between Yurika and Akito, she just hadn't expected to be so... acoustically aware of it. She shook her head slightly to clear it, deciding that when, if, that time ever came that the wall between herself and Hari would be at least soundproof and at best Hari would flat-out be elsewhere.   
"Kanchou!" Hari called, suddently materializing on a screen beside her.   
"Ne, Kanchou!" Saburouta echoed, appearing on a screen with a McLaren who appeared to be surrendering to some unknown Deity. "Settle the debate. Do you read everything on your screens?"   
"I generally only care about them when something changes. I know what most of them say in their normal state, except for the times they require my attention."   
"So they're like car gauges, then?" Saburouta asked.   
"I suppose that would be correct."   
Hari's screen sighed. "I guess you win, Tobias-san."   
"Thank you," he replied from behind Saburouta's shoulder. "Now, can we get on with this test?"   
"Haaai," Hari answered, sounding slightly in pain and reminding Ruri of when Yurika would react the same way when faced with something she didn't really want to do.   
Ruri nodded, "Open a channel to the control tower."   
"Channel open, Kanchou," Hari replied.   
A new screen blinked into existence. "_Nadesico_, this is the tower, what can we do for you?"   
"Omoikane's engineering team would like to run through a secure channel test."   
"Lieutenant Commander Hoshino, I believe the procedure is well documented. There is no need for a dry run."   
"I believe they ran into some internal issues on the ship. I would be more comfortable if these issues were resolved before the bulk of firmware updates are scheduled."   
The tower's operator sighed, "Very well. _Nadesico_, prepare to receive zero-point-five terabyte comm sys update."   
"Arigato," Hoshino replied. "I will transfer you to one of Omoikane's engineers to complete the process."   
Seiya's face appeared before Hari, Tobias and the Kanchou on a secured line as Ruri dumped the tower on Tobias. "Ready here!"   
"Thanks," TJ replied quickly as the irritated control operator appeared beore him. The two quickly exchanged technobabble and began the transfer fo the small patch. Tobias muted his connection with the tower and centered his focus on Mike and Seiya. "How're things going on your end?"   
Mike smiled in the screen, "You obviously didn't set a monitor on disk space, did you?"   
"Nope, just bandwidth metrics, where everything looks normal. They're still following the algo, but they don't seem to be doing much. Why?"   
Mike's grin widened. "'Cause they're good, that's way. We're at sixty-five percent of the patch but the cache directory's increased by fifteen terabytes."   
"I'm trying trace routes but I'm not really getting anything," Hari chimed in. "I guess that makes sense, though, if they're able to hide their transfer in the first place."   
"Transfer's almost finished, anything else we want to try?" Tobias interrupted.   
"Hari-kun," Ruri said quickly, "Take control from Tobi-san. Hack Nergal and modify the port algorithm."   
"Hai," Hari resonded, working as quickly as he could. "Demo... naze?"   
"It's simple," Mike replied, his screen floating into Hari's line of vision, with Seiya in the background. "If the transfer from source unknown stops when we change the algo, we're where we think we are-"   
"But if it follows the change, then the source is somehow inside Nergal," Seiya finished.   
Hari nodded in agreement as he completed the changes. "Last ten percent of file is on modified algorithm."   
"Looks like they're still scanning and sending to the old algo," Tobias said, relief growing on his face.   
"I've got code execution!" Mike called from his posistion several decks below.   
"Commence logging," Ruri said, her urgency clear.   
"File's done!" Hari called.   
Tobias shifted focus to the control tower operator, who appeared even less pleased than earlier. "That was a half-terabyte," the operator snapped. "What'd you numbskulls do to that ship to slow down the transfer so much?"   
"Gomen! Gomen!" Tobias chanted. "It seems someone was, ah, hogging bandwidth."   
"That explains why it picked up at the end. Alright," came the gruff reply, "one condition."   
"S-sir?" Tobias replied, confused.   
"Only one type of download hogs that much bandwidth, and I ain't talkin' fansubs. I'll let this slide if you get me a copy. Tower out, and I'll be looking for those files," he finished, winking out of existence.   
A second later the rest of Tobias' screens disappeared as well. "Mike!"   
"Sorry 'bout that, buddy," Mike said, appearing in front of McLaren. "We got nervous and pulled everything out of the test box but the power cable. We'll scan then bring Omoikane out of solitary. The pot's still running and I'm burning all of the data as I get it."   
"Afraid it'll realize it's cut off and start nuking the system?" Saburouta asked.   
"Yep," Mike replied. "We'll wrap up here then give you bridge bunnies all the gore."   
  
// \\   
  
Saburouta's and Prospector's eyes had long since glazed over, and Seiya and Hari were even starting to show signs of staring off into space. As could have been guessed Ruri and Omoikane were better able to grasp what had happened just by looking at the raw data than Omoikane's minions had been able to do with queries and filters.   
None were sure exactly how it had been pulled off, but what it had done was pianfully evident. The machine's final seconds were a complete loss, but the timeline that they had been able to construct revealed the horror. As soon as the download had started, whomever was ping flooding easily overcame all of the encryption to gain full access to the open ports.   
Once the rogue code had its foot in the door, it began executing, opening other ports to allow itself in while simultaneouslly faking how much bandwidth everything was using. It also throttled back the real download to allow itself more time for entry. It had continued its download on its self-opened ports after the real one had completed, and continued to bring data in on those ports until the moment Seiya physically disconnected it. Once it realized everything was cut off from the outside world, the program systematically destroyed every sector of its host system's drives, wiping the machine clean before forcing a reset and flash dump to destroy all evidence of its existence.   
"We could send the machine to MIT or Edinburgh if you like, Kanchou. We both know people at our campuses who might be able to get something out of that box we can use, but Mike's already tried every recovery technique I know of," Tobias stated.   
"Plus a few inventive ones, I see," Ruri replied in praise.   
"It'd certainly be cost effective to do it that way," Prospector mused absently. "But I suppose the more important question, Kanchou, is what do we do next?"   
Ruri nodded her head. "Suggestions?" she asked of the table.   
"Changing the algorithm seemed to work. I could have Omoikane modify it after every few port changes," Hari suggested.   
"That'd buy us some time, but I'm not sure it's enough," Mike objected. "We're looking at around 500 terabytes of patches and updates, and for all we know there may be a leak within Nergal. We didn't have that much time to see if they could adapt to the modified alogrithm. Plus as soon as we changed the algorithm to close off ports on it, it started wiping things, and I kinda doubt we want any part of Omoikane wiped."   
"Well, I don't have anything technical to add," Saburouta stated, leaning back and propping his feet on the table, "but they know we know. They're bound to have figured out by now that they didn't get into Omoikane, that it was a dummy box they hit."   
"This is true," Ruri agreed. "we must assume the worst with this. Tobias-san, Mike-san, do you have a list of the updates Omoikane is to receive?"   
Tobias passed a window to Ruri. "Grouped by critical, important, optional. Sorry, Kanchou."   
Ruri quickly read through the list and was forced to agree. "We can't afford to go without most of these. Not updating at all is therefore out of the question."   
Mike stared at the far corner of the room as the table lapsed into silence. "Drive swap," he suddenly said before his brain entirely caught up.   
Tobias jerked his head up from staring at his laptop, accidently locking gazes with Ruri, as Hari naze nani'd, "New array, one drive, set offline, pull drive, dump data to it..."   
"And run updates at our leisure," Tobias finished. "Kanchou?"   
"Agreed. Tobias-san, prepare a drive. Hari-kun, contact Akatsuki-san for proper permissions for this, and try to explain it to him in terms he'll be able to understand."   
"Namely, money," Saburouta mused.   
Ruri continued, "Mike-san, take possession of the drive and getting the firmware updates onto it once Tobias-san has prepared it. We will run the updates once in orbit, on the original timeline. Any questions?" Upon seeing none, Ruri dismissed the meeting.   
  
// \\ 


	6. Headed south

  
_**Author's Notes...**_   
_ Woo hoo! Chaos! Destruction! Mecha! Akito! And apparently caffeine. Hopefully less techno-babble in this chapter than the previous one. This one definitely has more language than some of the earlier chapters, but, ya know, that's how things sound when everything's going to hell in the server room. Actually, everybody who's been there knows it's worse in the server room.... _   
  
// \\   
  
Tobias sat quietly in his quarters and stared into a half-empty cup of tea. Mike had asked Omoikane after the meeting to alert both of them to any change in the port scanning against them. Omoikane had just now done that. An hour ago the port sniffing suddenly stopped, and had yet to start up again. Although the scans had been constant for the past several days, their sudden cessation would not have bothered him had it not been launch day for the vessel. However, because of that date he was sitting in his quarters ready for his day at 4:45 in the morning.   
He had been debating waking the captain but was talking himself out of it when his door chime sounded. "Who is it, Omoikane?" he asked of the dimly-lit room.   
"Kanchou" was Omoikane's simple reply. Tobias stared uncomprehendingly at the screen for a moment before his brain caught up, causing him to hurridly bolt for the door. He opened the portal in time to see Ruri turned to walk away.   
"Gomen nasai," Ruri said quietly as she turned back around to face his entry. "I didn't intend to wake you."   
Tobias shook his head. "I was already up. Um, join me for an early breakfast?"   
Ruri nodded and started down the hallway with McLaren quickly behind. "I take it Omoikane alerted you as well?" Ruri asked as they walked.   
"Mmm-hmm" McLaren replied half-absently. "I haven't made up my mind whether I should be worried or grateful."   
"I'm the former," Ruri admitted. "For the amount of time spent crafting what we saw, I doubt that they would simply give up. Also remember that our departure date isn't known to the general public. I would not expect it to coincidentally end while we depart."   
"You're leaning towards believing a fairly serious breech within Nergal or UE Spacey, then," Tobias observed, causing Ruri to pause before entering the cafeteria.   
She regarded him carefully for a moment before continuing. "I spoke with Admiral Misumaru yesterday. There is a belief that the Crimson Group is, for lack of a better word, regrouping. UES Intelligence believes they're going to try rebuilding a Boson program."   
"I'm not sure I follow," Tobias replied. Are you thinking the Crimson group is trying to... acquire Omoikane somehow?"   
"Short of Nergal's labs, he is probably the largest single repository of Boson data."   
"And I guess since the whole Successors incident, the returned jumpers are being very closely watched, leaving data all they'll get for a while?"   
"I believe so, yes," Ruri replied, stepping into the cafeteria. "Relay it to Christenson-san, but Saburouta-san, Ryoko-san, and Hari-kun are the only others on the ship aware of this right now."   
Tobias nodded in acknowledgement and punched at a vending machine's controls. "Mike took the drive over yesterday and had all of the install files put on it. We checked it on an offline system when he got back and everything seemed in order."   
"Go ahead and return the drive to Omoikane, and bring it online after we reach orbit."   
"Yes'm" Tobias returned as the two set their trays on a table and seated themselves.   
"Dude!" Tobias suddenly heard Mike exclaim as a screen with equal sudden appeared beside him. "The sniff stopped!"   
"Yeah," the Scotsman returned, "an hour and a half ago."   
"Yeah, I slept through Omoikane's alarm. Get down here man! I want to dig through these logs!"   
"Mikey, can it wait until after breakfast?"   
"You know, you are out about early," Mike said, and continued to rattle on. Ruri however found herself unable to pay attention to the banter as Prospector had appeared on a screen beside her.   
"Ma, Kanchou," he opened. "Last minute crew changes require your immediate attention."   
Ruri sighed to herself as she watched Mike and Tobias sign off with each other. The two looked at each other apologetically for a moment before McLaren spoke for both of them. "Guess it's a good thing Omoikane got us up early, eh?"   
  
// \\   
  
"Are you sure?" Akito asked, slightly incredulant.   
"She had Hari-kun specifically contact Akatsuki-san," Erina replied.   
"That only means Ruri-chan trusts the fact that Akatsuki guards his wallet more closely than he guards his secrets. It does not mean she believes _Nadesico_ to be the Crimson's target."   
Erina crossed her arms as she stood before Akito. "Does this mean you do not intend to be there to rescue your hime-sama?"   
Tenkawa glared at the woman. "In western lore, it was the night in shining armour who rescued the princess. I believe that my armour tarnished a long time ago. I believe that I have more in common with the Black Knight than any knight of the round table now."   
"The Black Knight was killed by Arthur," Erina pointed out.   
"He died for his ideals, right or wrong," Akito stated over his shoulder as he left Erina's office.   
  
// \\   
  
"Helm, clear all moorings," Ruri commanded. "Fire aft thrusters at one-half until in open waters."   
"Hai, hai," the helm responded. "All moorings cleared, aft thrusters firing at fifty-percent. Forty-five seconds until we're clear of the wetdocks."   
  
// \\   
  
Howmei stepped out onto the open-air observation deck and was surprised to see a familiar face with flowing blue hair standing at the rail. "Ohayo, Kanchou," the chef greeted as she approached the woman.   
"Dame, dame," the blue locks replied. "Ruri-chan's the kanchou now. I'm just Tenkawa Yurika."   
Howmei leaned on the rail next to her former captain. "Major Tenkawa Yurika," she mused aloud. "If you don't mind my asking, Tenkawa-san, you have the rank to be U.E. Spacey's resident liason--"   
"--so why am I not on the ship?" Yurika finished. "It's Ruri-Ruri's ship, not mine, Howmei-san. Besides, I'm going to wait on Earth for Akito."   
"As you wish it," Howmei said, a smile on her lips which somehow reflected a saddness Yurika didn't allow to even seep into her eyes. Both silently stood and watched the bow of the _Nadesico-C_ lift gracefully from the harbor's waters and roar towards the edge of Earth's atmosphere.   
  
// \\   
  
Lapis Lazuli opened her eyes and looked across the _Euccharis'_ control core to Akito. "The _Nadesico_ has launched."   
"The _Sarena_ is ready to fly again?" Akito asked in response.   
"Hai. The Battas have finished the last round of modifications we were supplied with. It is ready to jump at any time. Should I prepare the ship to jump as well?" Lapis answered.   
Akito nodded, "We don't know what exactly they have in mind."   
  
// \\   
  
The expected, collective sigh of relief echoed through the _Nadesico_ as the ship escaped the atmosphere, despite being an uneventful launch. Hoshino skimmed through departmental reports as they flowed in and found nothing more serious than a few skrews shaken loose, which probably hadn't been tightened in the first place. As the C had yet to receive a proper shakedown cruise, the vessel would spend a few days in orbit running through final tests and supply pickups before embarking on a patrol route to Jupiter and back.   
"Oi, Hari-kun," Saburouta opened when he noticed the Lieutenant looking over the ship's route, "ever been to Jupiter?"   
Hari shook his head. "It'll be nice to see the gas giant, but... this is a long time to get there. I wish we could just Boson jump there.   
"Hari, Haley, Hali," Saburouta teased, leaping over to put Hari and his chair in a headlock. "You're missing the point of patrol! Besides, you know as well as I do that the phase transistion engines haven't even broken a thousand hours yet."   
"Hai," Makibi sighed as Saburouta released his hold.   
"Hari-kun," Ruri interrupted, appearing on a screen, "Contact Tobi-san and Mike-san to have them begin updating Omoikane."   
"Ah? Hai!" hair replied, grabbing his IFS.   
  
// \\   
  
"Alrighty," Christensen replied after Makibi relayed the message.   
"Ano, is there anything you need help with?" Hari asked.   
"Bored up there?" Tobias asked, appearing over Mike's shoulder, smiling as Hari nodded in reply. "Well, Mike has all the actual patch work, but extra hands are always useful to make sure everything comes back up okay."   
"Hai!" Hari energetically replied as the three began work.   
  
// \\   
  
An hour passed quietly by when suddenly Mike burst out into a string of epithets. "Nan desu?" A startled Hari called through the channel as Tobias chorused with a more colorful response.   
"Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!" Mike yelled in response. "They got some of their code into a weapon systems patch!"   
"'Shit' would be correct," Tobias replied, grabbing his IFS as heard Hari talking quickly to the Captain.   
On the bridge, Ruri and Hari both dove into aiding Omoikane when suddenly Omoikane's automatic defense alarm sounded.   
"Kanchou, I have three unknown mecha in range. They just boson-jumped in," the helmswoman reported.   
"Raise distortion field," Ruri ordered, almost absently, as she dealt with the larger problem.   
"Field stable," the helm responded. "We're being fired upon. Return fire?"   
"Dame," Ruri replied, returning her attention to her screen with Hari. "Mike said we were infected through a weapon system patch, correct?"   
"Hai," Hari responded.   
"Helm, under no circumstances fire the ship's weapons," Ruri ordered. "Saburouta-san, launch Aestivalis."   
Saburouta's face appeared as the Jovian was clambering out of his pit. "Yo-" he managed to get out before his screen and all others in front of Ruri summarily winked out of existence.   
  
// \\   
  
"Shit!" McLaren yelled as he pounded his desk in frustration.   
"Toby, get up there and get the Kanchou down here. In five minutes the only systems that will be able to access Omoikane are our hard-wired ones," Mike said as he wrestled with his own controls.   
  
// \\   
  
"Kanchou!" Hari called, an edge of panic in his voice as he looked up from the hard-wired display in front of him. "Distortion field destablizing! Collapse in forty-five seconds!"   
"Helm, bring us to-"   
"Gomen nasai, Kanchou," The helmswoman answered, cutting off her captain. "I just lost helm control."   
Everyone who had ever known Hoshino Ruri had thought that despite an intollerance for foolishness and stupidity, she otherwise had a patience unmatched and an unerringly polite and calm disposistion which never displayed frustration even if she felt it. However, she now felt a frustration rivaling when Omoikane was housed in the first _Nadesico_ and had fired upon his U.E.S. Comrades. Ruri heard the doors to the bridge behind her open and stood to see Tobias trip his way into the bridge, and old-fashioned Motorola radio in his hand.   
"Kanchou! Lieutenant Makibi! Mike requests-" he started but was cut off by a burst of static from his hand.   
"Shit, dude! The air scrubbers just went offline!" Mike's garbled voice called.   
"Life support systems going offline," the helm reported in confirmation.   
"Kanchou!" the communications officer all but shrieked, "Aestivalis report loss of energy feed!" In punctuation, the sound of something colliding with the hull, most likely an Aestivalis, echoed through the bridge. The helm glanced at what instruments she still had at her disposal and then looked apologetically to her captain. "I suppose there's no point in reporting that without thruster control what we just heard knocked us out of orbit, is there?"   
  
// \\ 


	7. further south

  
_No header notes, but I stuck an exasperatingly long footnote down at the bottom. It's 11 but I got threatened within an inch of my life if I didn't post. Here's to 64 oz. of soda today. And Asamiya for creating this world I'm trying to wreak havoc in. Let's slip the dogs of war!_   
// \\   
  
In the darkness of space, the three unidentified mecha remained that way, settling into a line as if silently gloating over the expended batteries of the _Nadesico_ Aestivalis before them. Sabutouta was fairing in his situation much better than Ryoko, who was currently hurling venom at her unhearing opponents. He, on the other hand, was sitting quietly in his cockpit, no less angry but not interested in wasting resources. The rest of the pilots quietly floated behind their superiors, their inexperience having drained their resources faster than either Saburouta or Subaru.   
Saburouta was about to try calming Ryoko if for no other reason than to save his own eardrums when both pilots noticed a flash of light bounce off of their opponents. Their advesaries immediately raised their weapons while every last _Nadesico_ pilot twisted in their cockpit to see what had arrived unannounced. Just as suddenly as the new gamepiece appeared, Ryoko, Saburouta and their subordinates found their energy feed restored.   
Ryoko glanced at the feed's signature, and upon not recognizing it spun to face her benefactor. She stopped dead, recognizing the Aestivalis perched on the nose of the approaching corvette. "N-nani? Akito-kun?"   
Upon hearing Ryoko's comm transmission, Saburouta spun his Aestivalis around in time to see a familiar black mecha leap off of the nose of the _Euccharis_ and hurtle towards them.   
"Alright!" Ryoko cheered, "These temee are mine!"   
A chorus of support from the re-powered Aestivalis of her shipmates was suddenly cut off when Tenkawa opened a screen in their cockpits. "Dame," he replied in infinite coldness. "These bastards will be destroyed by me."   
  
// \\   
  
Ruri stood silent, still facing McLaren & Makibi, as bad news continued to pour into the bridge. Too many systems had been lost to try to regain control from the bridge. "Communciations," she said finally, with a gravity Hari wouldn't have believed possible.   
"H-hai," the officer responded.   
"Sound all quarters. Emergency evacuation. All hands abandon ship. Lieutenant Makibi and Ensigns McLaren and Christensen will attempt to regain control of the ship with me from the core and evacuate with it if necessary. I repeat for the ship's record, all hands abandon ship."   
Every member of the bridge crew understood every single word that their captain had spoken, and at this point they had all expected to hear it. Despite this, everyone within the bridge was mute with shock as the comm officer repeated the message on the emergency intercom system, one of the few fully functional systems left. The communications officer quickly carried out what she considered the most morbid order she had yet received, and then stood to evacuate with the bridge crew. She quickly walked to the door then turned, realizing that no one was folllowing her. "Let's go!" she yelled back at the bridge, stirring the shocked crew into motion.   
  
// \\   
  
"Akito-san," Lapis called to Tenkawa on a secure channel, "The captain of the _Nadesico_ has ordered abandon ship."   
Akito winced in his cockpit and quickly finished off one of his opponents. "Deploy batta to aid in corraling the escape pods. Apparently the Crimsons managed to get into Omoikane somehow."   
"It would appear that you are correct. Also, the _Nadesico_ has not sounded its emergency beacon."   
"Forge their signature and signal for them."   
"Hai."   
  
// \\   
  
Tobias and Ruri charged through the corridors of the ship towards Omoikane with a panting Hari close behind. They burst into the central core to find Mike connecting a second pair of IFS controllers to his chair. The trio stared blankly at him for a moment, noticing that he had performed the same operation on Tobias' chair as well. It was Hari who ended up speaking on behalf of them. "Ano.... nan desu?"   
"Well, if we don't get control of the ship, we're going to have to ride down in this tub. That being the case, I for one don't want to ride down in a chair that's not bolted to the floor and that I can't strap myself into. And despite building a rather kick-ass system here, they only put two such chairs in the room," Mike explained, as understanding crept into McLaren's and Makibi's faces. The two looked at Ruri and blood immediately flowed into both of their faces as they both apparently thought the same thing.   
"Hari," Tobias started, "You and the Kanchou take my-"   
"Hell no," Mike cut Tobias off, "I am not gonna run the risk of riding all the way down to earth with your damn mane all up in my face. 'Sides, these emergency harnesses look like they'd be too small for you and me together."   
Hari took note of the sizes of the room's inhabitants. As he realized that Mike was the largest person in the room and he the smallest, he resigned himself to his fate. He knew that his sense of resignation came from his desire to always be by Ruri's side, which at the same time was causing him a bit of jealousy despite the seriousness of the situation around them.   
Ruri waited almost impatiently as Tobias settled into his workstation as quickly as he could. She had a good guess as to what Hari was thinking and was herself not entirely comfortable with the arrangement Mike had given them, even if the circumstances had switched Tobias' and Makibi's places. However, this did make sense and finding another solution would simply take too much time. The ship agreed with her line of reasoning as a rumble shook through the vessel, announcing its contact with the upper reaches of earth's atmosphere.   
Hari quickly seated himself on Mike's lap and let the latter hurriedly strap them in as he began to take stock of Omoikane and the _Nadesico_. "Kanchou, Omoiikane doesn't want to seem to do anything."   
"Omoikane is feeling threateneed, and has gone into a protective mode," Ruri responded as she began navigating with the second pari of IFS controllers attached to Tobias' chair. "Hari-kun, Mike-san, and Tobi-san, please try to gain control of the ship's systems without AI aid. I will try to calm Omoikane and persuade him to help us."   
  
// \\   
  
The _Nadesico_'s Aestivalis pilots were a blend of calm and chaos. Ryoko, Saburouta and the few other almost-seasoned combat pilots were well-acquainted with emergency procedures and were execcuting them flawlessly. The younger pilots, most of which had decidedly not paid attention during drills, were quite effectively serving the cause of chaos and getting in the way of everyone including the Batta. Said younger pilots were fortunate to have the _Euccharis_ feeding them power, as they were having extreme difficulty in tethering the escape pods together. The experienced pilots found themselves doing the lion's share of corraling lifeboats as they left the ship, grateful for the aid of Akito's Batta.   
Akito watched in silence as the ship's shuttle disembarked from its home on the ship and manuvered to the front of the chains of lifeboats in order to be connected for towing them. "Lapis, do I remember procedure correctly that the shuttle contains the bridge crew in the even the bridge is not itself used as a lifeboat?"   
"Hai," Lapis responded from inside the _Euccharis_. "However, from the transmissions between vessels it would seem that Hoshino Ruri, Makibi Hari, and the two computer engineers are still aboard the _Nadesico_."   
"Saburouta reported that all lifeboats were accounted for," Akito pointed out. "Do they have any means of evacuating?"   
"Hai," Lapis answered. "According to the vessel's schematics, the core and two adjoining crew quarters can eject as one massive escape pod, with emergency power and life support systems above and below the adjoining crew quarters.   
  
// \\   
  
_"Omoikane? Omoikane, it's Ruri," _Hoshino called through her IFS. _"Omoikane, we need your help."_   
_"Ruri-Ruri, I can't. There are unknown things attacking me, things which frighten me,"_ the computer answered.   
_"I know, my friend," _Ruri said. _"We need your help to stop it in order to regain control of the ship."_   
_"I'm afraid I cannot help much," _Omoikane answered. _"The virus is able to come between myself and the ship. When it does, it provides false data to me. I dare not trust any data I see, even data which you provide me with."_   
_"I understand,"_ Ruri said reassuringly. _"Are any of your resources infected that you are aware of?"_   
_"No, the virus only exists in areas which I do not require to maintain myself at this point. However, I can only continue to guarantee this if you perform a complete shutdown of my processes and then take my arrays offline."_   
_"If this is the only way to protect you, then very well."_   
_"Ruri-Ruri... be safe." _Omoikane said.   
_"I will try," _she answered as she began to terminate Omoikane's processes and writing him to disk.   
McLaren looked down from his screens at the woman strapped into his chair with him when he heard a small, sad sigh escape her. "Kanchou, are you okay?"   
She nodded slowly as she claimed the remaining hardwired screens Toby wasn't using. She paused for a moment then gave the other three in the room a summary of her conversation with Omoikane. Hari echoed her sigh, albeit for different reasons, when she had finished.   
"So, we're on our own in-- Ow!" Hari suddenly cut off, jerking his hands off of his IFS controllers.   
Mike looked down at the top of Hari's head and was about to ask what happened when he felt a surge of electricity rip through his own IFS. "Tober, what the hell is goinng on?"   
Tobias jerked a keyboard tray towards himself and began keying furiously. "The virus has apparently realized Hoshino-san's shutting Omoikane down. It's feeding back any data input into it."   
"Demo... aren't the controllers set up to filter things like that out?" Hari asked.   
Tobias continued keying inbetween phrases. "The IFS have passive filters that take care of everyday stuff. This is actively creating feedback, so it looks like it fried the passive filters in a few seconds... aw, crap."   
Ruri twisted slightly to look at McLaren out of the corner of her eye. "What is it?"   
"The Image Feedback System is probably the only system on the ship that has to deal daily with feedback. If this could fry the safetys set up for the IFS--"   
"It would have no trouble short-circuiting any other data input sources from the ship," Ruri finished. "Tobi-san, set up filtering algorithms to lessen the feedback. Hari-kun, Mike-san, cut off all input sources to the central computer and prepare to restart them once the algorithms are in place."   
"What about you, Kanchou?" Hari asked.   
"I will see if I can isolate and shutdown the infection manually."   
"Kanchou, I heard rumors of how vicious Omoikane can be if threatened..." Tobias quietly began.   
"I am aware that the virus may be the same or even moreso," Ruri calmly replied.   
"Be careful, Kanchou."   
"Tobi-san, I have no intention of being otherwise."   
The group worked quickly and relatively quietly as the ship began to shake violently as it fell back into Earth's atmosphere. Tobias finally broke the silence with a muttered "Damn."   
"Nan desu?" Ruri asked.   
"If the Crimsons are doing this, my hat's off to them. I can't set up any filters that work for more than a few seconds. The infection has started modifying the frequency of the signal as it begins feeding it back, using some kind of random number generator I can't figure out. Manually filtereding the fedback isn't working either. This thing's faster than I am."   
"Don't mean to eavesdrop, but Hari and I have more bad news," Mike called from across the room. "We can't get the input streams turned off. It's starting to fry circuits throughout the ship from what we can tell."   
Ruri stopped momentarily in her fight with the core. "What are our coordinates relative to earth?"   
Hari turned as much as he could in his belted-in posistion. "When the navigation functions completely died, we were headed southwest over the northern Atlantic. That was 45 seconds ago."   
"Meaning we'll probablly be over the eastern United States pretty soon," Mike observed, then added, "unless we're accellerating."   
Ruri returned her attentions momentarily to her IFS, ignoring the feedback charges arcing against her hands. "if the ship were to explode, based on best available data, there would be minimal impact to ecosystems and metropolitan areas."   
Tobias tapped quietly on a keyboard for a few seconds. "I can confirm that the virus has not affected the self-destruct systems. Guess they wrote it to avoid that can of worms..." he finished, his voice trailing off.   
Ruri sat silently for a few moments as she initiated the self-destruct sequences. "Hari-kun," she said as quietly as possible in the increasing din, "please confirm sequences and initialize countdown at two minutes."   
"Hai," Hari said, working feverisly and ignoring the feedback as well. "Sequences confirmed, self destruct i two minutes... mark."   
"Tobi-san, Mike-san, eject the core," Ruri commanded.   
"Roger," the two replied, hands flying over controls. Concussions sounded and echoed throughout the core as the massive computer and its emergency systems loosed themselves from the confines of the ship.   
  
// \\   
**Naze Nani Footnote:**   
Generally I can keep myself from doing this kind of crap, but this time I'm going to do it anyways because I think one of my limbs is a little shaky here. Hopefully the exposistion will make what's going on in the core make more sense than less.   
FIrst off, what feedback is. I dunno how much electronic feedback is a part of everybody else's existence, but I grew up running sound systems in small auditoriums, so I've seen a _little_ bit of feedback of the acoustic sort. Acoustic feedback is also the easiest to describe, because we've all experienced it. Say you're singing. Sound comes out your mouth and hits your microphone where it's converted to electricity. Yadda yadda preamp mixer eq fx poweramp blah blah it hits the speaker and gets converted back to acoustic energy. Mic takes sound and makes electricty, speaker takes electricty and makes sound. Now, if you stick the microphone in front of the speaker, what happens? Sound goes in the mic, out the speaker, back into the mic, back out the speaker, back into the mic, back out the speaker. If you've ever programed you know what this is - an infinite loop. If you haven't programmed, this is, well, a loop that's infinite. Anyways. So the sound which is going around and around the mic and the speaker ends up getting louder, and tends to settle on a single frequency, which creates the howling you hear. Now, a little feedback never hurt any piece of hardware. Hell, Hendrix might as well have had entire songs of nothing but feedback between his guitar and his amplifier (the execution's a little different, but it works the same way)   
This applies to anything which has input and output. If you aim a TV camera at a TV showing the camera's image, you see the tv inside the tv inside the tv inside the tv inside the-- *OW* Thank you, whomever slapped me. Same thing with all the hundreds of you seen in a mirror maze or the three way mirror in the dressing room. They're all feedback. The same thing happens in electronics. However, _all_ feedback involving electronics, if it goes on long enough or powerful enough, will start frying those electronics. In the mic example, you'll probably end up blowing the diaphram in the mic or the cone of the speaker (the paper part in most speakers)   
"Fine. Shut up already. How the hell does this apply to Nadesico?" Okay. IFS. Image Feedback System. The manga takes it a step further with the React system. (only read through vol2 of the manga so far, hopefully i'm not stepping out on a limb with _this_ as well.) These systems take input from the Aesti or the Computer and feed it back to the operator. Generally, you think of it more in terms of outputing to the operator, because feedback occurs when the output and input get skrewed up.   
Now, a portion of the IFS appears that it might really be feedback. Such as you _know_ that the Aesti is lifting its hand, and which would also explain why Aktio appears to have problems controling the recoil of his weapon when he first flies. Now, the manga raises the danger of this - if filters are not in place, then the system can feed back dangerous levels of information which the brain interprets as what the body is actually feeling and reacts accordingly. Yes, this is indeed exactly like the Matrix. With the exact same problems.   
So, that leads to my opinion, that there are built-in safeguards in the IFS to prevent harmful levels from building up and causing damage to the operator (remember, in the sense I'm using, "operator" refers to pilot as well, not just the posistion of Computer Operator. What this virus is doing, essentially, is saying "you're sending me 3 millivolts? here, lemme send you 300 millivolts back. Not enough? How about 3000 millivolts?" (Okay, yes, yes, that's 3 volts.) And just like anything, if you send information the wrong way in a system, things often go kablooie.   
So, hope that helps clarify my thinking behind what I have going on right now in the ship. I'm not an EE, so there's definitely room for error, but this is how I understand things, so. Hope you guys enjoyed this section, I got to both wreak some havoc and put people in embarassing situations, plus I've neither gotten them completely out of the woods, nor am I done giving embarassment to the characters I added in. Hell, what're invented characters good for if not to beat around a bit? I'm sure Jun would like it dished out to somebody besides him. Besides, I try very hard to be evil. 


	8. a core dump of sorts

  
**_Author's Notes..._**   
_ Think maia may slit my throat in my sleep... I'm ending this one in a cliffhanger as well. Think of it this way... it's my own little nod to old-fashioned serials. Well, it's not really, but think of it that way if it makes you feel better. Also realize this, if it's not already farking obvious from the list of stuff I have posted here_ and _ the graphics on my website - I'm a Ruri fanboy. Hopefully not the weird creepy type, but a Ruri fan nonetheless. So from that it should be pretty damn obvious I'm not going to do any permenant damage to her in my stories. Hell, I even tried to work a lemon into Enemies and couldn't. In the same vein, I'm trying very hard to be nicer to Hari than I am in the IY-MSN stuff. _   
_Unfortunately, I do have to give Hari & Ruri a ... bruise (for lack of a better term) to advance the plot. But we're not there yet. Probably a couple more chapters before it gets into that. But, again, no permanent damage to them. Promise. Now to the chumps I created, I got no qualms with messing with them. I'll even kill 'em off if the plot requires. Anyways, enough rambling. We now join a black-armoured Aestivalis, somewhere in the upper edges of Earth's atmosphere..._   
  
  
  
The _Black Sarena_ hurtled through the upper levels of earth's atmosphere following the _Nadesico_ when Akito suddenly noticed motion on the belly of the the ship. "Lapis, report."   
"The central computer core is ejecting form the ship," Lapis reported. "Nuclear Pulse engines are increasing output to unstable levels. The resulting accelleration is pushing the ship back out of the atmosphere. It would appear that the _Nadesico's_ self-destruct sequence has been activated."   
Akito gunned the _Sarena_'s engines and closed his gap on the _Nadesico_. "Lapis, maintain lock on the _Sarena_'s coordinates and be prepared to jump me if necessary."   
"You're going to do something stupid again, aren't you?" Lapis asked casually.   
Akito smiled underneath his helmet. "My armour may have turned black, but I must still protect the hime-sama I am charged with."   
Lapis sighed through the comm link but refrained from muttering "baka" in reply.   
  
  
  
The quartet in the control room felt their abode shake free of its home with the horrendous sound of shredding metal accompanying it. "Minna-san, dump all all Random Access Memory and force-stop all processes," Ruri commanded. "Do not write any data to disk. Omoikane left that door open for us, we should go through it."   
"Youkai!" The trio around her chorused as they quickly finished off shutting down the system.   
"Uh, guys, I think we have a problem," Mike said as calmly as he could a few moments later. "I can't get confirmation that the braking thrusters are firing."   
"Could it because we shutdown all of the core?" Tobias countered.   
"Dame," Ruri answered. "The emergency systems are apart from the main core with their own arrays."   
"So, ah... anybody have any suggestions as to what we should do?" Tobias asked. "Besides pray, of course."   
The quartet felt a sudden jerk as if the falling core suddenly decided to slown down. They all fellt themselves pushed into the seats and their harnesses briefly slacked when almost as quickly they felt the harnesses return their tension as inertia caught up with their apparent change in speed. Tobias leaned his head as close to Ruri's as he dared in the seemingly free-falling comptuer. "Um, Hoshino-san, if we make it through this, can I, ah, take you to dinner or something?"   
Ruri blinked and stared at the wall in front of her for a moment. There was certainly nothing they could do at this point, so there wasn't any harm in discussing other matters for the moment. She suddenly found herself blushing slightly as she responded, "Hai."   
  
  
  
The engines of his mecha groaned in protest as he fought to slow the core in its descent. "Lapis, are they slowed enough?"   
Lapis glanced at her screens before replying through the open channel. "Your tow line when combined with the two thrusters which have fired has slowed their descent by fifteen percent. Another thirty seconds and according to specifications they will be able to touch down with minimal structural damage."   
  
  
  
Ruri and Tobias sat silently, unsure of what to say to each other. Neither was quite sure what had prompted Tobias to ask at that particular point in time, and it had left both rather speechless. Tobias for the most part simply listened to what he could hear of Hari and Mike's conversation over the din around them.   
Ruri knew at some level that the descent wouldn't last much longer but was having trouble convincing herself of this as it seemed like the chaotic ride would never end. At the same time another part of her was well aware that the termination of this fall was going to be far less than pleasant.   
  
  
  
If the _Sarena_ held a voice or even an AI, by this point it would have been protesting rather loudly about the fact that it was neither a towing ship nor a parachute despite Akito's using it as such at the moment. The _Sarena_ also would have objected that the tether line from the _Sarena_ was designed to either tether itself to something to to carry another Aestivalis a short distance, preferably underneath low-gravity conditions. It was not meant to carry the mass of a ship's computer core and most certainly was not intended to carry a mass of that size which also happened to be headed for Earth's surface in a near free-fall.   
However, the _Sarena_ did not have have any form of linguistic ability with which to convey its displeasure at the task it was given. As such, it was forced to convey its opinion through myriad warning lights and alarms, shaking and groaning its opinion to a pilot who was well aware of what the machine did not want to do. Despite his craft's best efforts to disuade his course of action, at the moment the _Black Sarena's_ pilot had no intention of listening to what his mecha was trying to tell him. Tenkawa Akito only cared about his altimeter and his airspeed. At this point, specifications said that the core would survive impact intact. However, the specifications made no mention of humans. This translated that Akito had no idea of how slow he _should_ be going. As such, he had resolved himself to slowing down the core as much as was possible.   
"Akito-san, in these conditions the core is more than three times the weight rating of your tow line. It cannot hold out much longer," Lapis warned.   
"Lapis, there are times when you just give specs the finger," Tenkawa panted out as he argued with the Saren's controls. "Besides, specifications are always written to avoid lawsuits."   
"And thus why you provide them with them with the gift of a finger?"   
"Sort of," Akiito said, and was about to try to further elaborate when the _Sarena_ seconded Lapis' warning.   
"Towline breakage immenant" appared, blinking in front of Tenkawa with white-on-red lettering to convey the panic Akito should be feeling right now. Akito, however, felt no need to panic as he glanced at his instruments. He was low enough and slow enough that the towline could snap at any time and the core could crash safely, albeit roughly.   
  
  
  
Ruri heard Tobias sigh in what she assumed was dismay behind her. "Doujdano, Tobi-san? Am I too heavy?"   
She heard Tobias laugh and turned to face him as much as the chair's safety belts would allow her to. "All apologies, Kanchou," he quickly followed his laugh with. "It's just that I'm amused by you being too heavy for anything other than a duck."   
Ruri's eyebrow decided to imitate Spock's. "A duck?"   
"British humor."   
"Mmm hmm. So what was the sigh for?"   
"Just thinking that roller coasters should only last two minutes or so," Tobias replied.   
"If this is what roller coasters are like," Ruri countered, "I believe they may be over-rated."   
Tobias' eyebrows lifted in mild suprise. "So you've nev--" he stopped when they all heard a loud, metallic pop eminate from the top of the core. Immediately all four felt their speed instantly increase as they were lifted against the chairs' harnesses. Ruri felt Tobias' cheek brush past hers and was about to ask if he was alright when she noticed the already-dim light of the core darken and realized that the speed increase was causing them to black out.   
  
  
  
The _Sarena_ shot upwards, its engines seemingly rejoicing at the loss of load. "Akito-san," Lapis called, "please return to the _Euccharis_. U.E. Spacey vessels are en route to recover the life pods. We should vacate the area before they arrive."   
"Hai," Akito answered, taking one last look at the falling core before returning his attention to his flying.   
  
  
_I honestly have no idea if they really would have blacked out or not. I don't really feel like digging out the equations and then working them to figure it out, either. Willingly suspend your disbelief for a moment here, k? :-)_


	9. Hope You Brought Your Cowboy Boots

_**Author's Notes:**_

_ Hmm. I decide to post this story as I get it typed in, and what happens? So much overtime I don't even want to look at a computer when I get home, much less do something productive in front of one. But whatever. In light of heaping a ton of misery upon our crew, this one backs off a bit and does some setup. Tossed in some warm fuzzies and crap to break up the misery-fest. Looking at what I have on paper right now, the rating will probably get bumped on up to R. It won't be anything that hasn't been done else-where in PG-13 land, but that coupled with everything else going on violence-wise and language-wise it may be prudent. :P Ignoring the fact that the story was rated in the pre-Janet era of the FCC._

[] [] [] [] []

Ruri's mind slowly worked its way back to consciousness and a slight groan from Tobias told her he was doing the same. As her body started responding again she began taking stock of herself. Her head hurt slightly but she guessed from the pain that at some point it must have collided with Tobias'. She had an even easier time brushing off the aching coming from every muscle in her body, allaying it to tension and adrenaline. Ruri realized that she was still laying her hands on the second set of IFS controllers Mike had attached to Tobias' chair, and lifted her hands to stretch her aching arms. The moment she pulled her hands away she felt them explode in pain.

Tobias didn't want to admit that he was enjoying sitting quietly with the captain in his lap when he considered the circumstances around why they were in this position, and yet he still found himself enjoying it somewhat. He suddenly felt the Kanchou start shaking slightly in front of him and lifted his head from his headrest to hear her crying softly. "Kanchou, are you alright?"

Ruri nodded her head, but when Tobias leaned his own head over Ruri's shoulder the source of her tears was immediately evident. While technically she still wore her white cotton officer's gloves, the electrical charges from the feedback had almost completely burned them off of her hands. Tobias' own palms ached slightly, as if he had grabbed onto a hot pot handle or the like, but the feedback appeared to have done far more damage to Ruri.

Hoshino heard McLaren's question but was still unsure how to answer him when she felt his arms gently encircle her waist. He held her tightly to himself for a moment before loosening his arms.

"There should be first aid kits in both Mike's quarters and mine," she heard him say. Ruri nodded her head, a little bit in shock at being hugged in such a way.

"Omoikane first," she said as she started to reach for the release to the belts still binding them to the chair. Tobias let go of her waist and gently grabbed her wrists to prevent her from using her hands for the moment. With one hand he fumbled with the latches while the other quickly tapped on a nearby keyboard.

"There," Tobias finally stated a few moments later. "It'll POST then run through a disk integrity check." Ruri slid from the chair and walked across the small office space to check on Hari & Mike. "That'll take several hours and then we can bring the processes up one at a time or whatever. How are they?"

"Sleeping soundly," Ruri replied.

Figures for Mike, kind of surprising for Makibi," Tobias said, moving to stand on the other side of the chair from her.

"He's slept through his alarm before," Ruri replied, "I suppose that it's not so surprising.

"Either way," Tobias replied as he walked over to the core's exit, "they'll be awake soon enough, and it's not like we'll be hard to find. Now, to get that first aid kit." He yanked on the manual release by the door, which parted the entry with a loud gnashing of gears. He worked the lever a few more times, ratcheting the doors wide enough apart to allow egress. "Geez, if that didn't wake them up--"

"It didn't," Ruri replied, walking through the doorway. Tobias shook his head at the sound sleepers and followed her into his quarters. He ducked past her as they entered and popped of random access panels within the room.

"Here it is," he announced after removing a fourth panel. "You'd think that they'd mark where these things are, eh, Kanchou?"

Ruri shook her head. "The evacuation procedures themselves are relatively an afterthought. Emergency life support systems, first aid kits, and emergency rations were added to the core so that Nergal could consider it a lifeboat, and therefore U.E. Spacey could not complain if Nergal required the core to be evacuated with the crew."

"Good old Uncle Nergal, always looking out for its bottom line," Tobias said, a hair on the malicious side. He rummaged through the kits contents and produced an aerosol bottle marked for burn treatment and skimmed its label. He set the can down as Ruri knelt and proffered her hands to him.

"Tobi-san, I noticed that you have what appears to be a mobile," Ruri opened, nodding towards an amalgamation of parts on top of his folded futon which was threatening to slide off onto the floor.

McLaren blushed slightly as he began to gently peel away the remains of Ruri's gloves, embarrassed as much over the earlier embrace and his contact with her now as much as over the mobile. "Er, yeah, I guess it's just kind of something left over from my childhood. It's kind of silly, I suppose."

Ruri shook her head. "Not really. I hav- had one in my quarters that was very similar to the one I have in my earliest memories."

"If it was stars and planets, I'll be forced to start singing 'It's A Small World,' and I hate that song," Tobias replied with a smile as he applied the spray to her hands.

"It was fish, actually. My room at the institute where I grew up was decorated with that motif."

"Similar here. I suppose decorating like that was supposed to be 'intellectually stimulating' for the time period.," Tobias commented sarcastically. Ruri's raised eyebrow bludgeoned him into continuing, apologetically, "I'm adopted, and before ending up with the couple I call 'parents' my biological parents turned me over to a genius shop. It was a rather... unsettling experience being there. Apparently the one I was, well, sold to was more interested in from-birth learning but went ahead and took-- Kanchou, did I say something wrong?"

Ruri's gaze, which had intensified, softened slightly as she shook her head slightly. "Not at all, Tobi-san. Where was the institute?"

"Sweden? Finland? Somewhere in that region of Europe. I can probably find out for sure from Da-"

"Helllllloooooo, young lovahs!" Mike called into the room, cutting Tobias off as he entered.

"One," McLaren replied flatly, "since when does treating the wounds of one's superior officer constitute a 'romantic moment?' Two, is Hari up as well? Three, how are your hands?"

"One, you two are hopeless, did you know that? Two, yeah, but he's still lounging in the core, I think. Three, not too bad. Hari's definitely worse than me and it looks like you are, too," Mike replied.

"Maybe, but I've burned myself worse before," Tobias replied as he stood. "Did you know that you can over clock an IFS controller?"

Mike laughed as Hari walked into the room. :you're a hopeless hardware junkie, did you know that?"

"Yeah, I know," Tobias replied, tossing Mike the medicine can. "Give Makibi-san a hand with his burns."

"And where are you going?" Mike returned.

"Borrowing your GPS. Dunno why the Hell you brought ti with you, but otherwise it'd be tomorrow before we figured out where in the world we are, and that's assuming whatever antenna the core's GPS would use didn't get ripped off as we came down."

"Left side of the desk, bottom drawer, Mike replied. "I think there's a hatch or something you have to climb through. I couldn't see a way to open the corridor's bulkhead."

"If you'd read the manual, you'd know that it doesn't open after the core leaves the ship," Hari countered as Tobias took the opportunity to smack Mike in the back of the head as he walked past.

Mike simply smiled, "Yeah, but who reads the manual?"

"Not you, obviously," Hari muttered.

[] [] [] [] []

Tobias sat on the cold metal of the exterior of the core near the egress hatch. Mike's GPS unit had already told him what he needed to know, but he was opting to sit and enjoy the cool air. He reflected that while the temperature was to his liking, Christenson was likely to complain that it was far too cold for his comfort.

The clank of duty shoes on ladder rungs attracted his attention, but, seeing as he was the only one to eschew the duty shoes in favor of boots, gave him no clue as to who was approaching. When he heard the ladder's climber stop he twisted around to his captain emerge.

"Enjoying the sunrise or the sunset"? she asked as he stood to greet her.

"While it's the sunset, I guess technically what I'm enjoying is the cold air," Tobias replied as he handed Mike's GPS to Ruri.

Ruri looked at the device's screen for a few moments before returning it to Tobias and looking back across the landscape to the setting sun. "Texas, ka? Isn't Mike-san from here?"

Tobias nodded and shrugged off his jacket, handing it to Ruri. "Yeah, he's from around Dallas and we're more or less equidistant to Dallas and Houston."

Ruri blushed slightly as she pulled Tobias' Jacket around her shoulders. She was about to reply when enough racket sounded from the nearby ladder that they assumed that both Mike and Hari were clambering up the ladder. Mike emerged first and before the two could greet him he let out a yelp which neither Ruri, Tobias, nor the still-climbing Hari was sure whether was in pleasure or pain.

"Day-YUM it's cold! Hey, wait a second..." Mike paused, blocking Hari into the hatchway and illiciting curious looks from everyone. "Double-damn. Tober, we're in East Texas, ain't we?"

Tobias tossed the GPS to Mike. "I honestly don't want to know how you knew that. But maybe we should head back inside because while ten degrees is comfy for me you three probably aren't exactly toasty. Especially Texans who break out the outerwear anytime it falls below twenty."

[] [] [] [] []

The four re-convened in Tobias' quarters, Mike's quarters having been summarily declared unfit for human habitation by Hari. For the moment, however, that was the farthest thing from Hari's mind, as he was currently being rather soundly beaten by his commanding officer at chess. Mike smiled slightly at the look of stark panic on the younger boy's face while trying to decide which move would prolong the inevitable longest. Not that Mike had any clue what Hoshino's strategy was, it was just that he knew _he_ wasn't about to try to play against her in anything that didn't somehow involve random chance. Mike shifted his attention to Tobias, watching his junior flit between the half-dozen laptops and desktops the Scotsman had assembled around himself on the floor. He sighed loudly then complained, "You know if you hadn't told the core to do a check disk we could all be actually doing something right now and Omoikane could be doing what you're doing."

Tobias looked up, raised an eyebrow but said nothing as he returned to his ministrations. Hari looked up from the chessboard and answered instead. "Ano... what would happen if we have bad hardware and use it without knowing so?"

Ruri opened her mouth to comment but Tobias spoke first in an odd accent, without looking up from his monitors. "Biiiiig badda-boom."

Further conversation was cut off when a loud metallic knocking began resounding through the core's walls. Hari turned to Tobias, "Tobias-san, what kind of test are you running?"

Tobias' head jerked seemingly in all directions at once as he checked monitors. Just sys-diags, nothing that should be making this kind of noise. Maybe one of the drives decided to fail."

"Sucker's failing in a grand and glorious way," Mike replied as the knocking sounded again.

"Mike-san, Hari-kun, please go look outside," Ruri instructed. When greeted with blank stares, she replied, "It sounds as if someone is knocking on the door."

Mike & Hari blinked in realization and quickly scurried for the egress ladder, with Mike saying something about how Tobias should know what a hard drive failure sounded like, and how the sound that they were hearing certainly wasn't it. Ruri watched the two leave then sat quietly for a few moments until she heard Tobias quietly hurling epithets at his computers.

"Nan desu?" she queried, turning to face him.

Tobias sighed and shook his head in response. "I just hope the drives faired better than the rest of the core. Which should now be called 'tub.'"

"That many systems have been damaged?" Ruri asked.

Tobias nodded as he grabbed a warm can of cola sitting in the midst of the chaos. "The life support systems are all but non functional. All that's heating the area are these machines. The core's A/C units lost probably half of their freon, meaning they'll freeze up pretty soon. When they do we can switch the compressors off and just run the fans. While winter in the arctic circle would've been better, Texas should be cold enough to keep the drives from melting."

"How has the core itself fared?"

"Half of the processor arrays are puddles of glass and piles of shards, taking half the RAM with it. Internal communications and hardwired networking are fine, but step outside of the core and you only have gigabit connection."

"In other words, we have just enough to be able to bring Omoikane back up, assuming enough of the drives pass the disk check. How is the power to the drives?" Ruri questioned

"Some of the fuel cells are damaged, but if we're only running Omoikane then that supplemented with what solar cells survived should give us several hundred hours run time."

"At which point we will hopefully have Omoikane back on Nergal's private grid." Ruri surmised.

"Do you want to connect him to the public grid in case I'm wrong?"

Before Ruri could answer, Hari appeared in the doorway with some of his usual enthusiasm returning to his face. "Kanchou!" he called breathlessly, "some people who live nearby offered to let us stay the night at their house!"

"Does Mike-san already know them?" Ruri mused aloud.

"He didn't seem to," Hari answered, "but he said something about Texas hospitality being a constant."

Ruri looked over to Tobias, who shrugged and replied, "It's typical of half of the state and atypical of the other half."

Ruri nodded and turned back to Hari. "Very well, we'll accept their offer of hospitality."

[] [] [] [] []

Of the mecha that had attacked the Nadesico, only one managed to survive the ravages of space and Akito. He were currently in the brig of one of the U.E. Spacey vessels which responded to Lapis' forged beacon, the Tsutsuji. However, at the moment he wished he was on his way to hell with his compatriots.

"My God..." one of the guards next to the door whispered to the soldier sharing duty with him.

"Yeah," his companion breathed. "I'd always heard she's a demon in an Aesti, but I guess she's just Oni, period."

The Jovian officer seated a few feet in front of them flipped his head backwards over his chair, causing looks of pure panic in the guards' faces. "Maa maa, don't let her here you say that, she might play with you, too."

Saburouta flipped his head back up for a moment before flipping it backwards again and whispering conspiratorially, "No one expects the Ryoko Inquisition, ne?"

"Temeeeee!!" Ryoko snarled from across the room. She had aimed it at the prisoner, but it had served to silence everyone present. "Answer the question or I'll start ripping fingers off until you talk!"

"Maa, maa," Prospector crooned, leaning in towards the prisoner. "I have no doubt that Ryoko-san would do as she threatens, and reattaching fingers becomes quite expensive quite quickly. Shall we try this again?"

The frightened pilot nodded his head, causing Prospector to smile as he straightened his back and adjusted his glasses. "Now, what is your name?"

"My name is John Smith," the man stammered.

An eyebrow raised as Prospector took in the man's definitely non-Caucasian appearance, but continued, "What is your mission?"

"We were to destroy the Nadesico, which despite our losses we succeeded in doing," Smith replied, an air of bravado returning to his voice. A snarl from Ryoko doused the flicker as quickly as it had appeared.

Prospector's expression remained unchanged as he continued, "Now, what is-"

"The air speed of a laden swallow?" Saburouta chimed in from his chair. Ryoko's Look of Brimstone and Damnation turned to her comrade, who shrugged. "I couldn't help myself," he explained.

"Wha- what?" the captive stuttered, staring blankly for a moment before his eyes refocused. "E-European or African?"

"European!" Ryoko snapped, unsure even why they were talking about it.

"I- I don't know! I mean, I don't know, SIR!" Smith replied.

If Ryoko were honest she wouldn't have cared what the man replied with, but took advantage of the it nonetheless. Snarling something about it being a wrong answer, she connected a blow to the man's jaw which caused the office chair he was handcuffed in to roll back several inches.

The door between the guards hissed open, flooding the dimmer room with light from the hallway. "Subaru-kun," a jowly voice called. "Leave some for the Confederation and the U.E. Spacey dogs above you!"

"Oi, trying to push around weight that only exists in your belly, Azuma?" Ryoko sneered over her shoulder, causing the former station commander's substantial paunch to shake with laughter.

"Come now, Subaru-_kun_," the former colony commander said, rolling the suffix around in his mouth. "I may have taken a demotion after Amaterasu, but I still outrank you."

"Demo..." Saburouta interjected, "since you were a pawn to the Successors, I'm not sure she really cares what your rank is."

A vein in Azuma's forehead throbbed but he somehow managed to subdue it after a few minutes. He turned and stepped out of the room, and as the doors were closing he turned and looked back. "You'll have longer careers if you leave the detective work in the hands of someone besides pilots and accountants."

[] [] [] [] []

Despite all of her time on warships, Ruri found herself exceedingly grateful to place her feet back on solid ground. When they had descended from the core and seen the... vehicle which their benefactor, who preferred to be called "Mick" drove. It had started its life as a normal pickup truck but had apparently been given a vehicular version of Miracle Grow, as it was now several feet off of the ground with tires which threatened to reach her waist. As there were only two seats in the vehicle's cabin, she and Hari opted to join Tobias in the back of the monstrosity for the ride to their host's house. The arrangement kept her free of the boisterous conversation between Mick and Mike, but at the same time left her stomach with the feeling of pitching about on an ancient sailing vessel instead of loping across hills in the back of a wheeled vehicle.

Almost as soon as their feet were on solid ground again in front of Mick's residence, the quartet found themselves ushered inside and in short order were seated around a rather large dining table upon which Mick's wife had placed copious amounts of food. Conversations spun long and loud, particularly between the Texans at the table. Mick and his wife Emma were both good cooks as well as gracious hosts. As the night claimed the final rays of light from the horizon the conversation lulled and Ruri managed to excuse herself to borrow the couple's video phone in order to contact Nergal.

A half an hour later Hoshino joined the party in their hosts' living room, where everyone was enjoying the spectacle of Hari soundly thrashing Mike at the console system.

"Mick-san," she opened, "is there someplace nearby where we could arrange transportation to Dallas?"

"Well, sort of," Mick drawled in reply. "Friend of mine runs a dealership a coupla miles up the road, and his brother runs one a little outside of downtown Dallas. There're no rental places nearby, so your best bet would be to 'buy' a car from him and turn around and 'sell' it to his brother once you can get a rental or whatever lined up. I'll go ahead and give 'im a call to let 'im know I'll be bringing you kids by in the morning."

Ruri nodded her thanks as their hose rose and headed down the hall to place the call. She frowned slightly then turned towards Tobias and Mike. "Tobi-san, Mike-san, one of you is licensed to operate motor vehicles, correct?"

[] [] [] [] []

Akito lay in his quarters, daydreaming of more pleasant times, when Lapis appeared on a holoscreen beside him. "Akito-san, all of the Nadesico crew except for those in the core have been recovered. Erina-san has informed me that Nadesico's captain made contact with Nergal. I would assume that means the core touched down safely."

Akito nodded slightly, still staring at the ceiling above his bed. "Even if it was not entirely 'safely', at least we know that the important part of the core is safe for the moment. Lapis, do you have Ruri-chan's coordinates?"

"Hai, Erina-san gave them to me. She also informed me that the captain intends to go to the nearest major city, Dallas, to await the team which will recover the core," Lapis responded, displaying a map before him. "There is one other piece of information Erina-san gave to me. She said that there is reason to believe that the Crimsons have a significant presence in Dallas."

Akito's brow furrowed. "Lapis, locate all properties held by either the Crimsons as a group or any member of their family in a twenty-mile radius of that city."

"Already completed," Lapis replied with a brief smile, and added the locations to the map before him.

Akito stared at the screen for a moment then grunted. He rolled off of his bunk and grabbed his cloak. "Hope you brought your cowboy boots, Lapis. It's field trip time."

"Yee-haw," the young girl sighed through the comm link as Akito left his quarters. She shook her head slightly then closed the channel on the empty room.

[] [] [] [] []

_**Footnotes...**_

_ Yes, Azuma was that big, bald "commander" of the Amaterasu colony where we first see the Nadesico-B and Ruri's extended and Saburouta's new locks. The implementation of spellcheck in the Linux version of Open Office is a resource pig. Maybe I'll rework it in a future version, but I intended his addressing Ryoko with "-kun" to really offend her (since he was emphasizing the fact that she's technically a subordinate to him). But what's there will do for now. Okay, on with more writing and typing so hopefully it won't be another several months before this story sees an update..._

_And if you missed the X-Files joke, we need to talk._

_Oh, and why are there no indentations on any paragraphs? Because I got sick and ing tired of ing with it to coerce the upload process to not blatantly ignore them. hey, look! It even relieves me of my asterisks! joy. I know they do their best, but... (sighs.)_


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